Active loadbalancing over static-routed serial links

[pgasparovic]

Hello,

I want get some your help or idea on how to best achieve the following objective:

I want to connect customer CPE to provider PE over two (eq. or uneq. speed) serial links, only static routing, and to actively load-balance over both links using per-packet loadbalancing.

Possible scenarios:

1) CEF enabled, HDLC procotol, two default routes over both link to PE (and vice versa, but with specific networks), per-packet enabled on each link interface, QoS would be delivered defining a same policymap (or two p-maps for uneq. speed links), and applied to each link equally. This should 100% run.

2) CEF, MLPPP, one default route (?) - need to study this, but I have heard the this is quite CPU intensive. What do you think about this, and QoS pmap definition(s) ?

3) CEF, FRF.16 (quite new thing), two default routes - have to study this. I have heard, that it's slow, what do you think? And QoS pmap?

4) Any other idea to achieve such quite simple objective?

Thank you very much for your prompt response, it's much needed to get it till Wed, at the latest.

Peter.

[tbaranski]

If the links are equal I'd try MLPPP then go back to per-packet CEF if MLPPP causes problems. MLPPP seems to be more CPU intensive on some platforms/software versions than others, so you generally have to try it before you'll know if it performs acceptably in your environment.

MLFR is another option though it's relatively new and (AFAIK) only supported on specific hardware and software. I don't see any reason to use it over MLPPP unless MLPPP causes issues.

Note however that if the links don't have equal bandwidth, load sharing is much, much more difficult. So I'd suggest trying to make them equal.