Best way to integrate a 20meg WAN Link into LAN

[Brian Aeschliman]

The current situation that I have is as follows. We have a core 6500 switch that has a PRI module in it that binds (4) T1 lines together and we also have a 2600 Rtr that binds 4 other T1 lines together and pipes them into a ASA5520. We are changing WAN vendors but still have to maintain the (8) T1 connections until our contract runs out, which will be in a few years. The 8 T1's are not enough bandwith for our operation and we will be adding a 20meg WAN link in the next month. What I am trying to figure out is how to best integrate 3 different WAN links into one LAN. What I am thinking of doing is to leave the 6500 core switch as is and then to purchase a router that can hold (4) T1 wics and the 20meg link. Is it possible to bind those 5 links together even though they are different vendors? My initial thought would be no but I am not sure. I am looking for a little advice.

[Edison Ortiz]

No, you can't bind them but with routing protocols, you can choose the 20MB link as primary and the 4T1s as secondaries.

Also, I'm assuming the 20MB link will be a ethernet handoff - if so, I recommend implementing HQoS with a shaper of 20MB. If you don't apply a shaper, the router will clock the WAN connection to the interface rate which can be 100Mbps or 1Gbps..

Regards,

Edison

[Brian Aeschliman]

Edison,

Yes it will be an ethernet handoff. I appreciate the advice and will have to do some research on the HQoS with a shaper. How would I handle the static route from LAN to WAN with two different providers. Does the HQoS setup deal with that. Let's say I have the following router setup:

MultiLink 1 (PPP multilink going to ISP1 the 4T1s)

Gigabit 0/1 (20MB link going to ISP2)

Gigabit 0/0 (going to LAN)

Would I static route the LAN to go to Gigabit 0/0, and then let HQoS divide the traffic to the two WAN links?

Thanks,

Brian

[Edison Ortiz · Accepted solution]

HQoS will not provide the routing, it will provide the quality of service for your traffic.

If you want to use your G0/1 as primary while having the Multilink1 as secondary w/ static routing:

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 [G0/1 next hop]

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 [MPPP next hop] 240

where 240 will be the Administrative distance for that route. BTW, 240 value is arbitrary - you can use any value greater than 1 which is the default AD for the static route.

Additionally, since you are going to use static routing along with an ethernet circuit, you need to use a track feature since the ethernet interface does not go down when the connection is lost.

For instance:

ip sla 1 

icmp-echo x.x.x.x source-interface G0/1

ip sla schedule 1 start-time now

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 [G0/1 next hop] track 1

Regards,

Edison

[sleepyshark · Accepted solution]

Use BGP between all of your ISPs - this will allow for load balancing and redundancy.  It will take some equipment upgrades as a 2600 will not support it and some reconfigurations between your existing and new ISPs.

Thanks,

Sean Brown

http://www.sleepyshark.com

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