Weighted routes vs. Routing protocols for failover?

shirwaziri1_2 · ‎05-13-2008

I need a solution for a P2P failover solution. We have Lan Ext's as our primary and t1's as our secondaries.

We initially used Static routes and increased the administrative Distance for the failover T's.

We want to change this so that failover is much more automatic instead of dependent on if the interface is up or down.

You assistance will be very appreciated.

Thanks,

Richard Burts · ‎05-13-2008

Shir

There are probably some things about your environment and your situation that if we knew them might shape the advice that we would give you. But in general running a dynamic routing protocol gives you the opportunity to dynamically and automatically select the best available route and to automatically react to any failure of a link and to converge to a backup link. Routing protocols like OSPF or EIGRP do this and converge more quickly. Protocols like RIP do this but converge a bit more slowly.

HTH

Rick

HTH

Rick

Joe Clarke · ‎05-13-2008

You might consider using the Embedded Event Manager for this. With EEM, you can detect all kinds of events on the device and in the network, and change the router's configuration as needed. See http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_4t/netmgmt/configuration/guide/t_eemo.html for more details.

If EEM seems like overkill, you could also use Object Tracking to install a route based on whether or not a tracked object is up. For example, you can create an IP SLA operation that ping a host over the WAN. If that operation fails, you can change the routing table to failover to another route. See http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_3/12_3x/12_3xe/feature/guide/dbackupx.html for more details.