Cisco WAAS x Asymmetry

[gustavosmivel]

                   Hello All,

I have the scenario below and the comunication between the Routers and Core Switchs are in a load share way witch means that we will have asymmetry on the WAAS below. How can we avoid it ? is there any specific configuration or feature to enable to avoid Asymmetry ? We must keep the inline design as the Routers and Core Switchs are HPN devices and do not support WCCP.

NOTE: Riverbed side we have "Connection Forward" feature to avoid asymmetry.

[gaursin2]

Hi,

What i understand from "connection forward" feature of riverbed is that it will switch to passthrough mode for assymetric connections (without this feature such connection will be droped). Please correct me if i am wrong.

comparing to cisco WAAS, which work on different mechanism of WAE discovery (TCP options), asymetric routing will result in no optimization (as end WAE's not able to see each other), but there will be no connection drop.

Now in your setup i see asymetric flow for corporate MPLS. Can;t we modifying routing (only for LAN and still use both WAN) to make a single path (switch--WAE--routerA) preferable.

[gustavosmivel]

Hi,

No. The Connection Forward feature on Riverbed definaly prevent the Asymmetry by send the SYNC packet to the first device that started the traffic. It work perfect.

What i need is a way to prevent the asymmetry on the scenario above by any Cisco WAAS feature or design whithout use WCCP and keep it inline.