I have 6 RHEL5.8 servers spread out geographically across the country with different domain addresses. One of the servers will be available for connections at all times (in other words, some servers will be unavailable sometimes).

The users roam about with laptops that are either RHEL or Win7.

The client software on a typical laptop has an entry to put the server IP address for it's data connection. Currently, the software has the IP address of the 'home' or 'preferred' of the 6 available servers. If the server is not available, the user has to manually change the IP to one of the other servers.

I'm looking for a methedology to implement that will automatically connect the client software on the laptop to the nearest active server if the 'home' or 'preferred' IP is not accessible at client start up.

Any ideas? Scripts? Router recommendations?

If you only want distance measured in miles then maybe use gps.

If you want access based on network speed then that may or may not be easy to find. Ping would be really poor since it isn't a good test for actual distance and speed. It can be affected by too many other issues.

QOS may be a choice also.

My thinking may be to start at the always on and hand off to the known closest working by some means also.