Two ISP's in a VSS environment with static routing

[deepak george]

Dear Members,

If i have a 6509-E chassis in a VSS environment and wanted to use two ISP's each 100 Mbps , how would i achieve this. 

I was looking for the best solution in practice. I can tweak the design  anyhow based on the best plan provided by the members here.

I am currently running static routing, can i achieve my original idea or else should i try a dynamic routing protocol

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi Deepack,

If this is for Internet access and VSS is facing the 2 providers than you can connect one provider to one switch and the other provider to the other switch.  You can use a dynamic routing protocol (BGP) with the providers but be careful not to import the entire global BGP routes (close to 600k now) as the 6500 may not be able to handle it. Probably a better and easier solution is to use static default route pointing to the providers.

HTH

[deepak george]

Hi Reza..

Woukd request you to elaborate on the static routing part. Do you intend tell that to use a floating static value for the second isp. Please advise

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

You can do it in 2 ways. One would be a default route to your primary provider and a second default route to your secondary provider with higher AD.  This means the primary provider is always forwarding until it fails and than the secondary takes over.

The second option would be 2 default routes to both providers with the same default AD.  This will provide load balancing between the 2 providers. They are both forwarding.

Another word, the first option is active/stand-by and the second option is active/active.

HTH