[c-nsp] Load Balancing of Unequal Ethernet Bandwidth

Tony td_miles at yahoo.com
Mon Feb 16 04:03:33 EST 2009


Hi Andy,

What happens when one link goes down depends on a few variables. In the simplest case it works as you would expect. Eg:


ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 ATM0.1 5
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 Tunnel0 5

router#show ip route 0.0.0.0
Routing entry for 0.0.0.0/0, supernet
  Known via "static", distance 5, metric 0 (connected), candidate default path
  Routing Descriptor Blocks:
  * directly connected, via ATM0.1
      Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 1
    directly connected, via Tunnel0
      Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 1


router#conf t
router(config)#int tun0
router(config-if)#shut
router#sho ip route 0.0.0.0
Routing entry for 0.0.0.0/0, supernet
  Known via "static", distance 5, metric 0 (connected), candidate default path
  Routing Descriptor Blocks:
  * directly connected, via ATM0.1
      Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 1


In this case shutting down the tunnel0 interface removed the route to that interface from the list of valid routes and there is no load sharing anymore.



regards,
Tony.

--- On Mon, 16/2/09, Andy Saykao <andy.saykao at staff.netspace.net.au> wrote:

> From: Andy Saykao <andy.saykao at staff.netspace.net.au>
> Subject: RE: Load Balancing of Unequal Ethernet Bandwidth
> To: td_miles at yahoo.com
> Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> Date: Monday, 16 February, 2009, 6:39 PM
> Hi Tony,
> 
> Thanks for that.
> 
> Yeah I saw at an example of that at:
> 
> http://blog.ioshints.info/2007/02/unequal-load-split-with-static-routes.
> html
> 
> It's a nice trick to know. Although when one link goes
> down, I believe
> you'll lose packets (or they may be delayed or resent)
> as the
> load-sharing algorithm uses round-robin to distribute the
> load and
> doesn't take into account whether the link has gone
> down or not.
> 
> Cheers.
> 
> Andy 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony [mailto:td_miles at yahoo.com] 
> Sent: Monday, 16 February 2009 6:02 PM
> To: Andy Saykao
> Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Load Balancing of Unequal Ethernet
> Bandwidth
> 
> 
> Hi Andy,
> 
> What do you run as IGP then so that we can help you out ?
> 
> If static routes, then you can do it using by having
> multiple routes
> that are to the same destination.
> 
> eg. on 2x serial links you might have:
> 
> serial1 = 200Mbps (10.1.1.1/30)
> serial2 = 100Mbps (10.1.1.5/3)
> 
> You would then add static routes like this:
>  ip route x y serial1
>  ip route x y 10.1.1.2
>  ip route x y serial2 
> 
> This way when you do "show ip route x" you would
> see something like:
> 
> * directly connected via serial1
>       Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 1
> * directly connected via serial2
>       Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 1
> *  10.1.1.2
>       Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 1
> 
> Your router would then divide the traffic into three with
> one third
> going to each of the destinations configured. The fact that
> two of those
> destinations are the same link means that two thirds will
> go down your
> 200Mbps link and one third down your 100Mbps link.
> 
> This is fairly basic and doesn't scale very well, but
> will work.
> 
> 
> regards,
> Tony.
> 
> 
> --- On Mon, 16/2/09, Andy Saykao
> <andy.saykao at staff.netspace.net.au>
> wrote:
> 
> > From: Andy Saykao
> <andy.saykao at staff.netspace.net.au>
> > Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Load Balancing of Unequal
> Ethernet Bandwidth
> > To: "Ben Steele"
> <illcritikz at gmail.com>
> > Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> > Date: Monday, 16 February, 2009, 5:39 PM Hi Ben,
> >  
> > When I googled around, there were many discussions
> abvout using the 
> > variance command with eigrp but we don't run eigrp
> internally as our 
> > IGP.
> >  
> > This is a typical setup where we need to upgrade some
> of our links, so
> 
> > we might upgrade 50M on the second leg and end up with
> a situation 
> > where the first leg is100M and the second leg is 150M.
> As you may 
> > know, some providers aren't so flexible so you
> can't just upgrade 25M 
> > on each leg because they increment by 50M per leg
> only. Hence my 
> > question if it was possible to load balance across
> unequal ethernet 
> > circuits without buying additional bandwidth for both
> circuits.
> >  
> > Thanks.
> >  
> > Andy
> > 
> >  
> > ________________________________
> > 
> > From: Ben Steele [mailto:illcritikz at gmail.com]
> > Sent: Monday, 16 February 2009 5:29 PM
> > To: Andy Saykao
> > Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Load Balancing of Unequal
> Ethernet Bandwidth
> > 
> > 
> > You could do this with variance in eigrp, just add
> variance
> > 2 into the
> > eigrp config and it will load balance on a 2:1 ratio,
> if
> > your links are
> > equally matched in terms of latency you can look at
> > enabling per-packet
> > load sharing on the 2 egress interfaces to get an even
> more
> > granular
> > distribution, this can wreck some havoc with unequal
> paths
> > and out of
> > sequence packets though, however if equally similar in
> > characteristics
> > then performance is usually very good. 
> > 
> > Ben
> > 
> > 
> > On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Andy Saykao
> > <andy.saykao at staff.netspace.net.au> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > 	 Is it possible to aggregate and then load balance
> unequal
> > ethernet
> > 	circuits like so:
> > 	
> > 	I have two ethenet circuits on my Cisco router. Both
> have
> > equal
> > costs to
> > 	the next hop.
> > 	
> > 	Ethernet Circuit #1- 200M
> > 	Ethernet Circuit #2 - 100M
> > 	
> > 	Can I aggregate both ethernet circuits so that the
> total
> > amount
> > of
> > 	bandwidth available to the next hop is is 300M?
> > 	Can I then load balance it so both circuits are
> equally
> > utilized?
> > 	
> > 	For example...
> > 	
> > 	* If I have 150M of traffic flowing to the next hop
> then
> > the
> > router
> > 	would spread the load across both links like so:
> > 	
> > 	100M through Ethernet Circuit #1.
> > 	50M through Ethernet Circuit #2.
> > 	
> > 	* The formula to use for this would be something
> like:
> > 	
> > 	Utilization / Total Bandwidth = percentage of
> utilization
> > required per
> > 	link
> > 	150/300 = 0.5
> > 	
> > 	0.5 x bandwidth of Ethernet #1 = 0.5 x 200 = 100M
> > 	0.5 x bandwidth of Ethernet #1 = 0.5 x 100 = 50M
> > 	
> > 	* If there was a total of 250M of traffic flowing to
> the
> > next
> > hop, and
> > 	applying the formula above, the router would work out
> that
> > the
> > load
> > 	distributed across both ethernet links would be:
> > 	
> > 	166M through Ethernet Circuit #1.
> > 	84M through Ethernet Circuit #2.
> > 	
> > 	Any ideas???
> > 	
> > 	Thanks.
> > 	
> > 	Andy
> 
> 
> 
>       
> 
> 
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