WCCP vs PBR

[suelange]

When is it more appropriate to use PBR vs. WCCP?

We have used PBR as a means to prefer one ISP over another with regard to voice/video/ and certain other traffic on our MPLS network.  One vendor has QOS the other does not and so we load balance trivial traffic over both, and keep the important traffic on one ISP. Unless of course that ISP crashes, then we let everything go over the other router.

Recently our security team has selected a web accellerator that requires the use of WCCP.  But what I've read indicates I can't run both PBR and WCCP, at least not on the same switch interface (in this case our vlans).  The security team believes that properly configured, WCCP can replace PBR, but I'm not getting that from the documents I read.  I'm getting that I can build a load-balanced/fail-over application for that web-accellerator.  Perhaps using the service protocols I can maybe do the same with the traffic for our MPLS but I'm not seeing that documented very well, if in fact I can.

Any information would be appreciated.

[Edison Ortiz]

WCCP is the recommended approach for redirecting traffic to a web cache engine.

PBR is the recommended approach for redirecting interesting traffic to a destination other than what's listed in the RIB.

As you stated, you have a Web Cache Engine and needs to redirect traffic to this device - I recommend using WCCP over PBR.

WCCP has more built-in enhancements to work along with Web Cache Engine.

For your design, place the WCCP redirect-in facing the clients and PBR on the WAN facing router to choose the preferred ISP.