Front End Network (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0)

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The six front-end Web servers, SMTP and DNS server, and an administration tools server make up the Front End network. The BIG-IP controllers also belong to the Front End network as well as to the Internet Space network.

The Internet Platform and Operations group used a private Class C network 172.16.1.0/24 on the Front End network. Because it was private, it was not divided into subnets.

  • Network: 172.16.1.0

  • Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0

  • Subnet broadcast address: 172.16.1.255

  • Available network addresses: 172.16.1.1 to 172.16.1.254

The network address assignment is as follows:

  • BIG-IP Internal VIP: 172.16.1.2

  • BIG-IP Internal DIP 1: 172.16.1.3

  • BIG-IP Internal DIP 2: 172.16.1.4

  • SMTP and DNS server Front End IP: 172.16.1.5

  • Front-end Web servers Front End IPs: 172.16.1.101 to 172.16.1.106

  • Terminal services, debugging, and administration tools server Front End IP: 172.16.1.107

Again, because the pair of BIG-IP controllers forms a fail-over cluster, they require an internal VIP. An NAT Internal IP is used as the default gateway on the IP configurations of the other servers for configuring NAT on BIG-IP.

All servers are configured to use the domain controllers on the Back End network as DNS servers. However, the Back End servers have no Internet access, and so can't resolve Internet DNS names. To resolve this problem, the Internet Platform and Operations group set up DNS service in the Front End network and configured the Back End domain controllers to forward Internet DNS resolution requests to this DNS server in the Front End network.