Load Balancing between 2 devices

[manumohan200]

Hi,

I am having 2 routers with gigabit interfaces. These interfaces are connected to two separate switches (3550's) to their fast ethernet ports.

I want to have 150 Mbps traffic between these switches. I know for this, one option is to enable Etherchannel. But in this case, since the source and the destination will be the same, all the traffic will pass through one link only in the etherchannel bundle group.

So Is there any thing additional to do in this etherchannel configuration, or is there any alternative to etherchannel ?

Thanks,

Manu

[sourabhagarwal]

you have 3550s ... is it a layer 2 (3550 SMI) or layer 3 (3550 EMI) switch.

if it is a layer 2, then I guess etherchannel woon't be able to do load balance as source and detination MAC will be same.

if it is a layer 3, then is their routing protocol running between them. if yes, then maybe we can config layer 3 interface between them and then routing protocol will take care of load balancing.

pl rate if it helps ....

[ankbhasi]

Hi Sourabh,

SMI does not mean it is layer 2 or layer 3. Even 3550 SMi is a layer 3 switch and even 3550 EMI can be configured as layer 2 switch.

EMI have some advance features compared to SMI but both can provide basic layer 3 and layer 2 functionality.

Regards,

Ankur

[sourabhagarwal]

Hi Ankur,

I agree with you that SMI doesn't mean that it is layer 2 switch, but by default 3550 SMI has Standard Multilayer Software Image (SMI) installed, which can be upgradeable to Enhanced Standard Multilayer Software Image (EMI) to support dynamic routing.

Obviously EMI can be configured as layer 2 switch as it is layer 3 switch, so it can supports L2 and L3 features.

what i tried to know from the poster is whether 3550 switches are configured as layer 2 or layer 3 or it has SMI or EMI image loaded on it?

[amit-singh]

Hi Soruabh,

I dont agree with you on this that "by default 3550 SMI has Standard Multilayer Software Image (SMI) installed, which can be upgradeable to Enhanced Standard Multilayer Software Image (EMI) to support dynamic routing".

A 3550 switch can also come by-default with an EMI image. You can order a 3550 with an EMI image as there were two parallel train that were running for 3550. 3550SMI and 3550EMI. A 3550switch SMI is upgradable to EMI.

HTH,

-amit singh