policy routing question

[pranav.shah]

I have a 7206 VXR router which has 3 T1s from two different providers connecting to the same 8 Port T1 card. I would like traffic from one FastEthernet interface to use 3 T1s goint to ISP1 and second FastEThernet to use 3 T1s going to ISP2.

If I use policy routing on one of the FastEthernet interfaces, I can make it use the ISp I want but I cannot use all the 3T1s so, 2 T1s will be left unused. is there anyway, I can use all 3 T1s?

3 T1s

Router x-----x ISP1

x-----x ISP2

3 T1s

int f0/2

ip policy route-map isp2

access-list 155 permit ip 10.1.0.0 0.0.7.255 any

access-list 155 permit ip 216.220.x.x 0.0.0.63 any

route-map isp2 permit 10

match ip address 155

set ip next-hop 1.1.1.1 2.2.2.2 3.3.3.3

I was wondering, if I were to do ebgp-multihop with the ISP 2, I would set up the next-hop as ISP2's loopback address. I would then set up static route for the ISP2 loopback address point to all three T1s that connect us to ISp2. Would this help in load-balancing?

thanks,

Pranav

[ciscomoderator]

Often times complex troubleshooting issues are best addressed in an interactive session with one of our trained technical assistance engineers. While other forum users may be able to help, it’s often difficult to do so for this type of issue.

To utilize the resources at our Technical Assistance Center, please visit http://www.cisco.com/tac and to open a case with one of our TAC engineers, visit http://www.cisco.com/tac/caseopen

If anyone else in the forum has some advice, please reply to this thread.

Thank you for posting.

[mnordhoff]

The question posed above seems to be kind of a mixture of technologies. If the goal is to inverse multiplex several links into a single link there are options depending on the WAN technology. If the T-1 links are clear channel DS1's you might consider a technology like multilink PPP. If the T-1 links are ATM you could purchase an IMA card that will link the lines into a single nxT1 connection. Regarding Frame Relay there are multimeg services available from a Service provider.

The second issue seems to relate to policy routing. My suggestion there is to use the power of policy routing to divert certain types of traffic over different links with the net effect being utilizing all 3 lines. For example you could divert all web traffic (TCP ports 80, 21) over 1 link, all Notes traffic (TCP port 1352) over 1 link and all remaining traffic over the 3rd link. Your route maps could be configured to divert traffic to other links if a particular type of traffic's primary link is down. Hope this helps...