HSRP- Load Balancing

[jonks]

I have set up HSRP on some routers and it works ok. I need to load balance these. I wonder if anyone can tell me how this can be done using HSRP Thanks in Advance

 

[Guest_imported]

for example if you configure 5 sub-interfaces on 2 router, you can make sub-interface 0.1 active on router 1 and passive in router 2. for the next sub-interface 0.2 the router 1 is passive and router 2 is passive.

 

[wybnormal]

one way is to reset your HSRP as group based. Router 1 would be HSRP group A. The 2nd router would be HSRP group B. Give A the priority and use HSRP as you normally would. What happens is you have two logical groups of routers.. both can be active at the same time so you split the default gateway among the clients. If you lose a group, the 2nd router will assume the MAC and IP of the defunct group along with it's own.

There are some restrictions to hardware that this can be run on. It's a killer setup for the bigger routers and switches.

Here are some notes from Cisco:
Several Ethernet (Lance and QUICC) controllers in low-end products can only have a single unicast Media Access Control (MAC) address in their address filter. These platforms only permit a single HSRP group, and they change the interface address to the HSRP virtual MAC address when the group becomes active. Load sharing on platforms with this limitation isn't possible with HSRP. The use-bia command was introduced to workaround issues that occur when running HSRP on the low-end products as mentioned above. For example, running HSRP and DECnet on the same interfaces causes problems because DECnet and HSRP try to modify the MAC address. With the use-bia command, you can configure HSRP to use the MAC address created by the DECnet process. However, you should be aware that there are some disadvantages to using the use-bia command, such as the following:

When a router becomes active the virtual IP address is moved to a different MAC address. The newly active router sends a gratuitous Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) response, but not all host implementations handle the gratuitous ARP correctly.

Configuring use-bia breaks proxy ARP. A standby router can't cover for the lost proxy ARP database of the failed router.

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/619/7.html

HSRP support page

http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/Support/PSP/psp_view.pl?p=Internetworking:HSRP

"Diplomacy; the art of saying 'nice doggie' till you can find a rock" Wynn Catlin

 

[jonks]

Thanks very much