This topic is to discuss the following lesson:
hey Rene,
i’m trying to configure mpls te tunnels in a lab and i would like to know if there is a way to load-balance the hops of a tunnel.
for example, i have one ethernet line between 2 routers (P To P) and i want to add another line between them with the same bandwidth and affinity value.
before adding the line’the tunnel is going exactly as it should be but when i add the second line, its not load-balancing on the lines between the routers and going only on one of them.
there is a way to do this?
Hello Dorel
Keep in mind that each LSP tunnel will take a specific physical path through the MPLS topology. The tunnel itself cannot be load-balanced across two physical links. The only way to achieve load balancing of the traffic is to create two tunnels and load balance across them.
If you do this, you should be able to achieve load balancing between tunnels that go through different links. Now keep in mind that there are two mechanisms working here:
- The first has to do with the path that each individual tunnel takes
- The second has to do with how traffic is balanced between tunnels.
These are independent operations and are configured separately. In order to achieve what you are describing, you need to configure two TE tunnels, and make sure one tunnel goes over one physical link between your P routers, and create another tunnel and make sure it goes over the other physical link. This can be done in various ways. One way is to use explicit paths.
Once you have set up your tunnels to take the paths you want, you can then configure load balancing across the two tunnels just like in the lesson. Does that make sense?
I hope this has been helpful!
Laz