Per-packet VS. Per-destination load balancing , . .

[shikamarunara]

Can someone suggest a situation where per-packet load balancing would be a better method than per-destination (in CEF)?

[christianjkoch]

if you want the load to actually be equal rather than unequal

[network.king]

Hi

You will use load balancing per packet : 1.When your multiple links are running on 80% average and you cannot make one link to carry 95% and other 65% if done per destination load balancing .

2.When the links are from single provider , you can go for load balancing per packet

Load balancing per destination :

1.If the links are not very much utilised and if per destination load balancing happens also , you will not have problem

2.If your wan links are from multiple providers , so that in case of latency diff from the provider will not have problems in reachability of packets.

Hope it helps

regards

vanesh k

[shikamarunara]

Thanks, this does help.

-Shikamarunara

[amit-singh]

Hi Friend,

This can be used if you have 2 parallel links going from Site A to Site B and you want to load-balance the traffic equally on these 2 links. By default the load-balacning will be per-destination and this will not distribute the load equally. Now to achieve the equal distribution of packets on these 2 links use the CEF per-packet load-balancing.

HTH, Please rate if it does.

-amit singh

[shikamarunara]

I know how it's used, no this does not answer my question.

My question is; in what kind of situation would it matter to load balance at the packet level as opposed to the destination level?

-Shikamaru

[Richard Burts]

Shikamaru

If you have a situation in which out of order packets will not have a negative impact on the applications running and where you want to possibly get more even spread of traffic over multiple paths, then you have a situation in which per packet load balancing might be a better method.

HTH

Rick

[amit-singh]

I agree with rick on this. VOIP is one of the example where you cannot run per-packet load-balacning on the parallel links. If you are running VOIP and you enable the per-packet load-balancing, you might turn into a whole lost of problems like voice packet out of order arrival which will make the voice traffic as choppy and un-audible.

HTH,

-amit singh