HSRP Load Sharing on a switched Network

[remmus]

Hi All, I am trying to run HSRP in our LAN (switched Network),basically what I want to do is run HSRP.

1) My core would be composed of 3550 and 3508 switches and enable load sharing between the two.

* HSRP Group 1 active for the other segment

* HSRP Group 2 active for the other segment

This is to enable load sharing between the two and have one sement utilize the 3550 and the other utilize the 3508.

I'm not sure but I think I need Layer3 routing to be able to do this

2) The switches are connected physically thru 2 gigabit interfaces - Should I track this 2 interfaces or just track 1 interface.

I'm having confusions and not sure how to really implement this.I hope you guys can help me with this. Any input is much appreciated. Thanks,Alvin

[ERIK LAWAETZ]

HSRP provides redundancy for the IP default gateway of your users, and as such it's a layer 3 service, and requires a layer 3 device, such as the Catalyst 3550. The Catalyst 3508 is a straight layer 2 device

so you can't use that to provide layer redundancy.

The HSRP suppport page provides very good info on how to configure load balancing with HSRP as well as insight into how to use the track command.

http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/Support/browse/psp_view.pl?p=Technologies:HSRP&viewall=true

When considering load balancing you should look both at layer 2 and 3. At layer 2 you can load share traffic by distributing the Spanning Tree root of the different VLANs on your distribution switches, and at layer 3 for instance thru' HSRP.

This paper provides a quick overview of a campus design:

http://www.cisco.com/warp/customer/cc/so/neso/lnso/cpso/gcnd_wp.htm