Topology design question

[gilson_machado]

I have 4 switches interconnected on my core network. I am running HSRP only on two of them.

But I need to have any one of the four switches supporting the users in case 3 fails.

Today all PCs have the existing HSRP ip address between two of the switches as its default.

I am adding two more switches to the topoogy (layer 3). Should I creat an HSRP group including all 4 switches and have a "virtual" switch (layer 3) as default for the network?

[compsolv]

You can certainly add four switches to the HSRP group and have them all work together to represent the single virtual router that is assigned to hosts.

Something else you may want to consider, is the Gateway Load Balancing Protocol (GLBP) - especially if it is supported on your four switches. This protocol will allow all four switches to represent the virtual router - but it also supports load balancing between the devices.

As I am sure you know - a drawback of HSRP is that there are no sophisticated methods for load sharing across the devices. You need to configure this on a VLAN by VLAN basis - and this gets very cumbersome. With GLBP, you can select from a number of sophisticated load balancing routines and can achieve true load balancing between the multiple switches!

Hope these words help!