DHCP on our network is configured with two values against gateways: 192.168.1.251 and 192.168.1.253. This has never caused any problems in Windows XP. We're currently putting Windows 7 through it's paces in the lab and discovered that IE8 had real trouble accessing the internet directly but worked fine through the proxy. When we set-up a static IP, it worked fine. We finally discovered that it was the second gateway 192.168.1.253 which is currently down (it's a backup router anyway). It looks to me like W7 is maybe trying to load balance in some way when there are two gateways. Maybe send one request down one gateway and one down the other. That explains why maybe PING worked but IE had trouble display pages - it displayed some information but not other bits.Am I barking up the right tree?Cheers, Rob.

Hi Rob, As previous Windows systems, Windows 7 will only connect to one default gateway. If the default gateway is down it will try to connect to the backup route. If there are two gateways, once one of them is down the computer should connect to network without any problems. I just suspect that this is related to DNS, because DNS load balance does not work properly if DNS server is down. What is the situation if you try to access websites with IP address?

That's we thought the gateway settings worked but this seems to call that into question. The two DNS servers are working fine, based upon W2k3 AD servers.The effects are completely repeatable: W7: Two gateways defined, with the 2nd one being offline: IE8 on W7 has trouble loading pages - speedtest.net in this case. The effect you get is just like when you've got a seriously overloaded web server that is having trouble serving up parts of the pages XP: As above, no problems at all W7: One gateway defined - works perfectly Cheers, Rob.

Then only set one default gateway. As Arthur pointed out, the machine will only use one anyway, XP or Win 7.Bill

It's there for reduncancy. If the first internet link goes down, it switches to the second automatically. It only appears to be IE effected by this BTW. If the OS was switching between gateways, I'd expect ping.www.bbc.co.uk -t to show errors but that works fine. I wonder if this is connected: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/159168Cheers, Rob.

Hi Rob, As previous Windows systems, Windows 7 will only connect to one default gateway. If the default gateway is down it will try to connect to the backup route. If there are two gateways, once one of them is down the computer should connect to network without any problems. I just suspect that this is related to DNS, because DNS load balance does not work properly if DNS server is down. What is the situation if you try to access websites with IP address? Hi, Pardon my simplicity. One default gateway, two DNS servers defined in order of use. Is there a time where you can stop the default gateway to test this? Will it find 192.168.1.253 automatically?

The article KB159168 if for multi-homed environment. For example: 1. There are two NICs. 2. One of them connects to a DHCP server DHCP1 that is connected to Internet.3. The other connects to another DHCP server DHCP2. 4. Enable both NICs, there will be two Default Gateways. 5. If the level of DHCP2 is higher automatically, DCHP2 will be the Default Gateway of this computer. 6. In this case, Internet access does not work. Because DHCP2 does not connect to Internet. 7. Now you need to manually set Default Gateway to DHCP1 to get Internet connection work. Please note that in the above scenario: 1. Whether DHCP1 or DHCP2 will be Default Gateway depends on the design of the NIC drivers and the DHCP servers. 2. If DHCP1 isrecognized as Default Gateway, Internet access works properly and we do not need to change anything. Rob, is it the situation of your side? Arthur Xie - MSFT