Alcatel Unleashed

Dear members,

I have a question. I'm starting a research about efficiency of load sharing and load balancing. I know the protocol OSPF himself has the function per destination load sharing. U just have to equal the metric distance of each route. I also know Cisco has the function on OSPF to turn off the ip route cache. When this is done, per packet load balancing will start.

Now I wonder if this "per packet action" function is also possible on de OmniSwitch 6850 and 6400. I have read the manual, but I can't find this anywhere. Also google couldn't helped me further.

I hope u guys can help me further with this problem.

Kind Regards,

Hans

Hi Hans,
I thought that the load balancing in ospf is per packet - only the method for choise the path is different:
with start of 6.4.2 there is a new hashing control algorithm - extended mode (normal is brief mode).
Brief Mode:
- UDP/TCP ports not included.
- Only Source IP and destination IP addresses are considered.
Extended:
- UDP/TCP ports to be included in the hashing algorithm.
- Result in more efficient load balancing.
Is it what you're looking for?
Silvio

Hi Silvio,

Thanks for the reply, but unfortunaly this is not what I meant.

Per-destination or per-packet load-balancing depends on the type of switching scheme used for IP packets. By default, on most Cisco routers, fast switching is enabled under interfaces. This is a demand caching scheme that does per-destination load-balancing. To set per-packet load-balancing, enable process switching (or disable fast switching). This can be done by turning of de ip route cache.

Now I wonder if this also possible on the alcatel OS6400 and OS6850.

Regards,

Hans

Hi,
I dont know this feature at alcatel-switches. But there is local-proxy-arp possible at the ip interface. Than all bridged traffic will handled like routed traffic. But I don't know any influence to load balancing/ECMP.
Silvio