8 WAN bonding - is it possible by cisco?

[cisco96050]

Hi there, I'm a newbie to cisco, and I'm wondering if somebody can help me choose the right cisco router solution for my current situation:

8 internet links via WiMAX CPEs, terminated with Fast Ethernet ports. We used to depoly some loadbalancing appliances to accoplish this taskm but here we are now trying to get this solutioin from CISCO if possible. So many thanks in advance for your help.

[paolo bevilacqua]

You cannot really "bond" ethernet links.

However, the router wil statistically distribute traffic over them and you should be fine anyway.

[cisco96050]

Sounds good p.bevilacqua, could you advice me with a specific configuration? Router model / Network Modules?

[paolo bevilacqua]

Would recommend a router in 2800 class, according to your budget also. It also depends what is the aggregate speed of these links.

Please remember to rate useful posts with the scrollbox below.

[cisco96050]

Ok p.bevilacqua, every WiMAX ethernet line can get 2Mbps Download/512kbps Upload speeds. Now what is the right network module that I can use for each line, and is there any network module can handle them all once?

After I spent some time in cisco and other websites, I figured out I can get this up using 2811 - 2821, and the old 3640 / 3660 with Cisco NM-2E-2W. I'm right?? thanks for your help and I will not forget to rank of course

[paolo bevilacqua]

I would use a minimum of a 1841, front-end with a 29xx switch, or a 28xx with hwic-9esw.

Avoid old routers because they are not adequate anymore.

[cisco96050]

but isn't those modules (hwic-4esw/hwic-9esw) are just L2 switching ports as I already know from cisco docs, or can be used as a routing ports?? Please explain.

[paolo bevilacqua]

Can be used as routed ports, just assign each port to a different vlan and configure it.

[cisco96050]

I have all the gadgets here now, I will try to start configuring 1841+hwic-4esw asap and will be back with the results. I dunno where should I start exactly, and our advice is really helpful. Thanks

[paolo bevilacqua]

You start from this with two circuits:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk648/tk361/technologies_configuration_example09186a0080950834.shtml

Only after is working well, you add further ones.

I would appreciate if you could consider that either my advice is 100% correct (as I think it is) and rate consequently, or refrain from rating at all.

[cisco96050]

thanks alot p.bevilacqua for your support, it worked well but not fine as I expected becouse of the default cisco load-balancing technology (per-destination). Now when I tried to switch the ip load balancing to per-packet basis, I couldn't reach the internet anymore and even the ping has a lot of time-outs.

Any I deas???

[paolo bevilacqua · Accepted solution]

Avoid per-packet, it just causes trouble as you noticed. Note router balances per-flow and not just per-destination.

Over time, the traffic will be statistically distributed, that is all what matters and you cannot do better than that.