HSRP vs. OSPF or EIGRP

[eap]

Hello,

We are trying to achieve load balancing and redundancy from a VLAN on a 4000 switch with redundant links going to 2 different 6500 switches. I understand how to accomplish redundancy and loadsharing with HSRP, but I am wondering if there is a better way using either OSPF or EIGRP. Any idea if this is doable and if so a reference of how to use these routing protocols between vlans.

Thanks,

Paula

[thisisshanky]

Hi Paula,

Is your 4000, a layer 2 or one with layer 3. I assume its a layer 2 only stuff. It would be much better to use, load sharing on a vlan basis, using HSRP in this case. Split the total number of vlans to two groups, half being served by cat 6500-1 and the rest half served by cat 6500-2. If the 4000 is a layer 2 only stuff, it doesnt have routing capabilities, so using OSPF or EIGRP is not feasible to load balance.

[eap]

Thank you. I think you are right that our 4000 only has layer 2 capability currently. However, if we were to get layer 3 capability, would OSPF or EIGRP prove to be more efficient than HSRP?

Thanks again.

[7rbowenii]

OSPF and EIGRP are routing protocols. i am not all that familiar with EIGRP, but OSPF can use equal costing paths to share load between layer three devices. This is done within the routing protocol as long as there is more than one path with the same cost.

HSRP in itself, does not load balance. It is the way that it is implemented that can help you achieve an even distribution of traffic.

Routing protocols can assist in using more than one path, HSRP provides redundancy for end devices' gateway.

So, if you have several layer-3 devices, OSPF will share traffic through equal costing paths to the same destination. Providing load sharing. HSRP can be configured such that you can have two (or more) gateways on the same (or different) networks. This requires that you set half(ish) of your end devices to one gateway and the remainder to the other. HSRP provides failover of gateways, but you can implement in such a way to provide redundancy while also sharing load. Do you need assistance with the configuration of this?

-Bo

[eap]

Sure, I would like to load share by vlan though. Each 4000 has a single vlan on it. I would like to put half the vlans to 6509 and half to the 6506. Do I have to configure a separate hsrp group under each vlan?

Thanks.