Need to loadbalance - 1.5Mbps and 640kbps PVCs to same remote locations

[epearson]

I have two WAN connections to a remote office. 1 - 1.5Mbps PVC and 1 - 640kbps PVC. Ideally, I would like traffic to use the 640kbps PVC only when the 1.5Mbps PVC is 'full'. The PVCs are defined on subinterfaces of an ATM interface on a 7500 series router. I run EIGRP. Can EIGRP or CEF be configured to help me with this?

[Richard Burts]

Eric

The good news is that EIGRP does have support for load balancing over links with unequal metrics. You enable this by configuring variance under the EIGRP protocol.

There may be another alternative to consider. If you configure the 1.5Mbps to use the 64kbps as backup link there is a configuration option to define a load threshold. In normal operation the primary link carries the load and the backup link is in standby mode and carries no traffic. If you configure a load threshold and the primary link goes over that threshold then the backup link will be activated and will carry some load.

The backup inteface alternative may be something that you want to take a look at. But my suggestion is to go with the EIGRP solution.

HTH

Rick

[epearson]

Thanks for the ideas. I had not thought of the primary link and standby link solution. I will look into that further. - Eric