Help choose the appropriate etherchannel load balance method

Hi
I have 2 network architectures :case A and case B (found architecture below)
Case A : one server connected on the switch on each site
Case B : 3 server connected on the switch behind a router on each site
2 site are connected by 2 wireless link :each wireless link have 105 Mbps bandwith (I absolutly need the agregate bandwith 210)
Site headquarter is the principal site and site backup is use to backup data located on the principal site
I use Gbit cisco 2960 switch
I use etherchannel to agregate the 2 switch port (port 1 and port 2) where the 2 wireless link are connected
I configure src-mac for case A but all trafic is send only on one wireless link .
Please help me to choose the more appropriate load balance method to load balance traffic between the 2 link for the case A and for the case B
Please advise
Thanks in advance

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Your Case A might be handled by port hashing, but unfortunately most Cisco platforms don't support it.
Your Case B isn't much better, as you only have 3 hosts on each side, and according to your drawing, they are behind routers, so you don't want to use MAC hashes. If you don't have port hashing, next best choice might be src-dest-IP hashing. Again, though, with just 3 hosts, your distribution will likely not be very balanced, especially over shorter time intervals.
To obtain best utilization of your links, you need some kind of better link bonding, such as MLPPP (unfortunately, usually won't scale to FE rates) or a hardware MUX. Next best option, if you could route across the links, would be something like Cisco's OER/PfR which can dynamically load balance.

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Hi,
yes you can choose the method of Load balancing in LACP:
port-channel load-balance {dst-ip | dst-mac | src-dst-ip | src-dst-mac | src-ip | src-mac}
Configure an EtherChannel load-balancing method.
The default is src-mac.
Select one of these load-distribution methods:
•dst-ip—Load distribution is based on the destination-host IP address.
•dst-mac—Load distribution is based on the destination-host MAC address of the incoming packet.
•src-dst-ip—Load distribution is based on the source-and-destination host-IP address.
•src-dst-mac—Load distribution is based on the source-and-destination host-MAC address.
•src-ip—Load distribution is based on the source-host IP address.
•src-mac—Load distribution is based on the source-MAC address of the incoming packet.

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Reading up on my Etherchannel load balancing options (src or dst, mac or IP) it seems to me that I don't have a good way of using Etherchannel to increase bandwidth in my situation. In my scenario, I have a Windows terminal server servicing a couple hundred users which are using a SQL database on a 2nd server. Both servers are on the same switch. Basically I only have one MAC and one IP. Is there a way to utilize multiple links in this scenario? It seems like I would need a packet based technique to take advantage of multiple channels and unfortunately that isn't an option with etherchannel. Thoughts?
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Hi Diego,
If I understand you correctly, your scenario is similar to this
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*Please rate helpful posts.

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I'm a bit confused as to how an etherchannel load-balances traffic across all the links, in the port-channel. If I have a 4 port etherchannel, to an AIX host, does the traffic load balance across all 4 ports? In reading the load-balancing documentation, it states that a global configuration of src-mac forwards traffic from the same host, over the same port, all the time, whereas it forwards traffic over different ports for other hosts. What if it's the same host tied into the port-channel? So if my AIX box has 4 ethernet cards in a port channel, each ethernet card goes over only one link? If the ethernet cards are bundled, into a port channel config, is there no way to load balance all the traffic? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the etherchannel configuration and how it works. Thanks for any and all help!!
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Glen is absolutely correct. on layer 2 switches EtherChannel load balancing can use either source-MAC or destination-MAC address forwarding.
With source-MAC address forwarding, when packets are forwarded to an EtherChannel, the packets are distributed across the ports in the channel based on the source-MAC address of the incoming packet. Therefore, to provide load balancing, packets from different hosts use different ports in the channel, but packets from the same host use the same port in the channel. With destination-MAC address forwarding, when packets are forwarded to an EtherChannel, the packets are distributed across the ports in the channel based on the destination host MAC address of the incoming packet. Therefore, packets to the same destination are forwarded over the same port, and packets to a different destination are sent on a different port in the channel.
So with every different source or destination mac it will use a diff link. If there is a session started on a aprticular link for a source to a destination it will keep on using the same link until the session termiantes or link goes down.
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I agree with Karsten, That there would be any problem.
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HTH
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Inayath

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I want to lod balance two servers using CSS 11503. The requirement is to send all the traffic to Server1 untill it dies. Meaning that...Server2 will be sitting idle and only become active when Server 1 is not available. I am not sure which load balancing method should be used to acheive this result.
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It really depends what you are doing.
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To answer this question check with your webserver admin.
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Philo Janus, MCP Bridging business & Technology: http://www.saintchad.org/ Telecommuter? http://www.homeofficesurvival.com/ Author: Pro InfoPath 2007 & Pro InfoPath 2010 Pro PerformancePoint 2007 Pro SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 Building Integrated
Business Intelligence Solutions

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Trevor Seward
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This post is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion or view of Microsoft, its employees, or other MVPs.

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Help choose the appropriate etherchannel load balance method

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