I need some pointers on load balancing 2 DSL tails from one provider who uses CEF. They can do this either on a per-packet or per-source/destination pair basis.
I have read in the forum that this would be an available feature in 2.9, but cannot find any further information on how to make it work. No luck with the manual either.
I’m currently using two gateways in my default route which seems to be load balancing the upstream. When the provider activates CEF, latency and lost packets increases significantly.
We have the 2 DSL tails load balanced using source-destination pair based CEF. While not as equally balanced as cisco-cisco per-packet CEF, the results are very good. The hourly averages are within 5%
We terminate the 2 x DSL on 2 x cisco2600.
The setup is
{cisco2600}–(Private IP)—|eth1
{cisco2600}–(Private IP)—|eth2 MikroTik eth3|–(2 x /28 routable IP)–clients
Each Cisco2600 has 2 static routes that direct both our /28 subnets at the mikrotik. Our bandwidth provider has enabled source-destination pair based CEF load balancing on the DSL’s. Our default route from the mikrotik has the 2 x Cisco2600 private IP’s as the gateways, which is working very well to load balance the upstream.
The new system is scaleable. I have already acquired an extra /26, which to implement was as easy as adding another static route to each cisco and an extra address range to the mikrotik. I have plans to add more DSL tails which should simple.
Unlike other people in the forums load balancing experience, I have had no impact from out of order packets or broken protocols such as VoIP, internet banking and streaming media.