CSS and etherchannel support

[sbirn]

What is the current status of Gigachannel and/or etherchannel support for the css boxes? I'm told that there is no current support but it may be on the roadmap.

Thanks...

Steve

[wukunpeng]

L7 switch dedicates Layer 4-7 function performance,Not low layer data throughput.

Could you tell me what's the significance CSS support FEC or GEC? Thanks.

[sbirn]

Increased availability.

Given a data center architecture designed to avoid STP yet giving a high level of availability, the lack of GEC on the arrowpoints means that a failure of that link offers two choices in a failure model: a) use 2 parallel links and be forced to introduce STP w/ uplinkfast to the network or b) fail over to the redundant arrowpoint unit.

Support for GEC/FEC means I'd have access to a less painful initial fail-over option before resorting to failing over the entire box.

[wukunpeng]

Right,FEC or GEC can avoid single link failure,but it can not avoid session state loss.FEC or GEC is layer two technology,when a link of FEC or GEC broken,some transitting data will be loss.If the critical app running the platform,I think your customer will be despair.

So,I suggest,when customer needing robust e-business platform,you had better design redundance L7-switch to deploy stateful failover.

[sbirn]

I do have redundant CSS units. But even that failover is going to risk a few stray packets.

It will work fine failing over to the other unit, and I have no issues with leaving it at that. But if the only problem is a cut/bad cable, I'd just as soon minimize the actions needed in order to recover.

[BrianATL]

"L7 switch dedicates Layer 4-7 function performance,Not low layer data throughput.

Could you tell me what's the significance CSS support FEC or GEC? Thanks."

Could you explain this a little further? If I am using the CSS as a simple layer 3 loadbalancing switch to distribute high-volume website traffic accross a webserver farm, why would low-level data throughput not be a priority over (or at least along with) the higher layer functionality? Is there a way to increase the bandwidth without using FEC, or is this swtich simply not designed for this purpose, and I need to buy a gigabit ethernet load balancer?

I ask because I've got serious bandwidth issues on my CSS11050 that I'm using in a performance/scalability lab, when using it to loadbalance heavy-XML content webservices my FE NICs are maxed out.

[6rdold]

Is there any more infomation on the idea of a CSS 11152 running etherchannel?