Load Balancing IP to IP over multiple links

[Kudetauk77]

Hi All 

I have an issue where I have an  8  gigabit port channel between a Cisco ASA 5525 AND A Cisco 3850 . 

One of the links in the port channel  is becoming heavily utilized due to Back up traffic between the same 2 IP addresses

I would like to Know if I can somehow load balance over more than 1 of the gigabit channels to stop the single gigabit link being over utilized and dropping packets . 

Cisco suggests this is not possible due to it being the same MAC / IP address 

Any suggestions ?

Cheers

Craig 

[GRANT3779]

Hi,

Depending on what other traffic you have going over the port channel you could potentially look at per packet load balancing on the switch. However this could cause issues with other types of sensitive traffic such as voice, video etc.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

That depends on what hashing algorithms the device supports. A few Cisco devices also support using port numbers as part of the hash to deal with situations like the one you describe. However, if yours does not, and it only supports using MACs or IPs, then your only other alternative might be to see if you can multi-home these servers so that they have multiple IPs and then configure the backup to use those different IPs.

[GRANT3779]

Joseph has provided good information.

Also, actually reading again, I don't believe etherchannel does per packet
load sharing so please ignore 😊