I have a windows 2003 server with 3 nics on 3 vlan's (this is in domain 1). nic 1 has a default gateway to my router/firewall (sonicwall). In nic 2 and 3 I have left it empty, because it is advised like that everywhere. Within this domain and VLAN's 1-3 everything works fine.

BUT...

I have a second domain (domain 2) with a 4th Vlan (all 4 VLAN's connected to the same router/firewall) from which my clients need to access the 2003 server in domain 1 (it's my antivirus management console for both domains). when i ping the server from my vlan4 by it's FQDN, it randomly chooses ip from nic 1, 2 or 3 from my 2003 server. (logically because that server is know in DNS with it's 3 IP-addresses. And that is needed for my VLAN's 1-3) I don't really have a problem with that. BUT, I only get an answer of NIC1 (which sounds logically to me, because it's the only one with a gateway).

It is not a router problem, because I'm testing in this phase and ping from vlan4 to any machine in vlan1, 2 or 3 that has 1 nic works just fine.

If i add a gateway to nic2 and nic3, I get answer from all 3 nics and this works fine. But I know it's adviced to not do that. Can anyone give me advice in this particular case? Would it really be a problem to add a gateway to nic 2 and 3? They would be pointing to the same router/firewall (only with different ip-address, based on the vlan).

Or is there another good solution to fix this problem?

Thank's in advance,

Thierry.