Help with 2621 and load balancing

[john.morrissey]

I need some help in configuring load balancing between (2) 2621 routers that have (2) PTP T1 lines connecting them. As it stands right now, we have the routers configured for Multilink PPP and both serial interfaces for the T1's are configured for this interface.

Lately, on our network, that has been an extreme amount of data that is passing between the two offices and I am wondering if the excessive load is placing a lot of stress on the CPU of the routers and possibly causing us great bottlenecks.

Is Multilink PPP the best solution in our case or should we use some other method to connect the offices. I have heard about setting static routes with metrics (basically 1 pipe going upstream and another going downstream) but I am not sure if this will help out.

Any information would be greatly appreciated. Also, if any of this seems vague then I apologize. I am new to this and have had to figure out the Cisco setup on my own.

Thanks

John

[donewald]

John,

For the best load sharing Multilink PPP is the way to go. You'll need to ensure that you are having CPU or resource issue by measuring things within your network. The 2621's CPU should be okay with only 2 T1's depending on what your traffic rates are. So measuring CPU and your Bandwidth utilizations will help you find a Baseline for you network and see if Multilink PPP, although a better load sharing mechanism, is causing you CPU issues. If so, as you stated static routes or equal cost dynamic routes could be the way to go. I'd stikc with the Multilink PPP until you find that it is slowing your routers.

Try the free tool MRTG for this measuring. It can give you a very quick idea of whats going on with your network device. Here's a link for it.

http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/

Hope this helps you,

Don