Hi I have two hex routers in different locations(NY and NJ) and both are behind an ISPs router.
Is it possible to use EoIP in this setup if the ISP routers can’t be removed from the scenario?
My ultimate goal is to have a unified network between these two sites at the layer 2 level
You’d have to have NAT translations configured in the ISP router at each site.
And bridging the two sites is almost certainly a bad idea. Use a routed tunnel instead.
…unless you need broadcasts flowing between the two sites.
Since MT does not have something like bcrelay, that’s impossible.
… IMO, it’s better to make the services work properly at layer 3 than to bridge two sites just because a broadcast-based approach is easier. The next question would invariably be “how do I make hosts at site 1 use router 1 for Internet, while hosts at site2 use router 2? And how do I make sure the IP addresses don’t conflict with each other?”
More workarounds to alleviate design headaches caused by an improper work-around to avoid having to do something more advanced than just plug-and-play broadcast domains… well, that’s a snowball that just shouldn’t be allowed to start rolling down the mountain. I do realize that sometimes it cannot be helped, but a proper design should be abandoned only when there is no other reasonable option. It’s pretty rare that the actual goal is “shared broadcast” - it’s much more likely that shared broadcast is a consequence of some other goal, and that it’s often an unnecessary consequence. (example goal: I want to see my IPTV source at two sites - proper solution = implement IGMP proxy or PIM)
If you don’t have public IPs on your routers you will probably need to run a NAT-able tunnel from both to some third router that is on the public 'Net. E.g. pptp or GRE. If the ISP routers support some kind of DMZ feature, try that. Some ISP routers will terminate an inbound IPSec or pptp connection in which case use that. Once you have clean IP connectivity between the two routers you can configure the EoIP tunnel.
I’ve used EoIP for situations where we were dealing with devices that would not accept non-local management traffic yet had to be managed remotely. E.g. cheap IP cameras, networked lightbulbs…