Dual-homed
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dual-homed or dual-homing can refer to either an Ethernet device that has more than one network interface, for redundancy purposes, or in firewall technology, one of the firewall architectures for implementing preventive security.
An example of dual-homed devices are enthusiast computing motherboards that incorporate dual Ethernet network interface cards.
In Ethernet LANs, dual-homing is a network topology whereby a networked device is built with more than one network interface. Each interface or port is connected to the network, but only one connection is active at a time. The other connection is activated only if the primary connection fails. Traffic is quickly rerouted to the backup connection in the event of link failure. This feature was designed to provide telecommunications-grade reliability and redundancy to Ethernet networks.[1] Multihoming is a more general category, referring to a device having more than one network connection.