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load sharing over ATM links

aacole
Level 5
Level 5

I have a customer who wants to increase the bandwidth available to one of his ATM connected branch sites.

Currently they have an E3 link at the core with E1 circuits at the branch offices. He now wants to install a 2nd E1 ATM link at a branch office, and have 2 VC's back to the core site, ideally achieving as close to 4 Meg bandwidth as possible.

My initial thought was to use 2 PVC's and simply load share using EIGRP, this should provide a solution.

After reading more on ATM I came across mention of alternate solutions, based either on multilink PPP or bundled PVC's. However I'm unable to find much detail on either technique that relates to my application. Are either of these ideas viable and if so can anyone provide URL's so I can read up some more.

I'm thinking that if I can use a virtual interface in the router then I should get closer to the ideal of having a 4 meg link between the sites.

5 Replies 5

chuck.price
Level 1
Level 1

Check into possibly using ATM IMA. I'm using that and I have 4 T1s bundled into one 6Mb PVC. Here are a couple of links that will get you started.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/customer/tech/tk39/tk356/technologies_q_and_a_item09186a0080111162.shtml

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/customer/tech/tk39/tk356/technologies_configuration_example09186a0080174992.shtml

Hi Chuck,

Thanks for the reply, I had thought of IMA, that was my first suggestion. However after talking to our ATM product mgr I discovered we dont support that in our core network. A bit sad considering I had already specd the IMA hardware in the branch routers.

So some form of load sharing or link combining seems to be the only way forward, but I dont have the ATM experience to decide which.

What type of equipment are you working with in the branch office and at the core? Also what IOS version.

Core site is a 7204VXR running 12.1(10)E1 with a PA-E3-ATM interface.

Branch site is a 2621XM runing 12.2(8)T5, interface is a 4 port ATM E1 IMA card.

The 7200 needed this particular release at installation time as it has to support the SA-VAM, although later images now suport that hardware.

Its a shame not being able to use IMA. The branch is all ready for it. My ATM experience is in the IMA area. I'm really not too sure if the Multilink PPP will work, but a search of the Cisco website did turn up some documentation of MPPP over ATM.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/iosswrel/ps1839/products_feature_guide09186a00801149cf.html

I also did a search on the Cisco site and couldn't find anything on the PA-E3-ATM interface. The only reference was to a PA-E3 serial interface. Looks like you have your work cut out for you.

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