EtherChannel Load Balancing - per packet?

Question

I had a question raised to me by another tech when I was explaining theoptions on load balancing for one of our etherchannel's across two ofour switches (3750).  He asked me why their is no option for "perpacket" load balacing.I started to research this and did not find any real answers or optionson this.  Can someone enlighten me on why this is not an option - theirmust be a downside or I am sure it would have been a feature?Also, I am refering to a L2 etherchannel between two switches.Thanks,Amy.

amyl · Accepted Answer

Dan,Thank you for your reply, but I was asking why per packet loadbalancing would not work not what the available options were.ThanksAmyDan Daniels wrote:

amyl · Answer

Arnold,Thank you - can you cite any examples.  I am looking for somethingconcrete I can wrap my mind around.ThanksAmy

Dan Daniels · Answer

From:   balances the traffic load across the links in a channel through the reduction of part of the binary pattern that the addresses in the frame form to a numerical value that selects one of the links in the channel. EtherChannel load balancing can use MAC addresses or IP addresses, source or destination addresses, or both source and destination addresses. The mode applies to all EtherChannels configured on the switch. You configure the load balancing and forwarding method with use of the port-channel load-balance {dst-ip | dst-mac | src-dst-ip | src-dst-mac | src-ip | src-mac} global configuration command.

Arnold Nipper · Answer

On 22.08.2005 14:41      wroteWith frame/packet load balancing you may run into the problem of re-ordering. Someting layer2 does not cope with.Arnold

EtherChannel Load Balancing - per packet?

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