Load balance traffic between ISPs

[ridha1980]

Dear all,

Our network is peering with 5 ISPs, I'm trying to load balance inbound traffic based on link utilization. now we doing it manually.

I found that PfR do this automatically, but it's not supported in IOS XR,

Is there an equivalent feature to PfR in the IOS XR ? or any other way to achieve dynamic inbound traffic load balancing ?

we are using Cisco 12k router with IOS XR

Thanks

[xthuijs]

by adjusting your inbound traffic you will need to advertise your network with different metrics to your bgp peers.

managing inbound is always tricky, because you need a larger subnet to segment into smaller chunks, and your peer would need to support you messing around with things like MED or AS-path prepending.

So while you have options to control the inbound traffic, it is going to need some support from your BGP peer. If it is the same provider, it would be easier to manage, if it is between different ISP's, then one of your options is to segment your large(r) subnet in smaller chunks and advertise different as-lengths on those chunks to each ISP. (still requires the peer to accept small(er) chunks).

Outbound is easy, you can use DMZ link bandwdith for that (have an article on that here on the forums).

xander

[ridha1980]

Thanks Alexander,

so this confirm that this is the only way to control inbound traffic.

[xthuijs]

correct Ridha, you will need peer AS support to help distribute traffic towards you one way or the other.

xander