BLADEOS 6.5.2 Application Guide

Host Routes for Load Balancing

BLADEOS implementation of OSPF includes host routes. Host routes are used for advertising network device IP addresses to external networks, accomplishing the following goals:

￿ABR Load Sharing

As a form of load balancing, host routes can be used for dividing OSPF traffic among multiple ABRs. To accomplish this, each switch provides identical services but advertises a host route for a different IP address to the external network. If each IP address serves a different and equal portion of the external world, incoming traffic from the upstream router should be split evenly among ABRs.

￿ABR Failover

Complementing ABR load sharing, identical host routes can be configured on each ABR. These host routes can be given different costs so that a different ABR is selected as the preferred route for each server and the others are available as backups for failover purposes.

￿Equal Cost Multipath (ECMP)

With equal cost multipath, a router potentially has several available next hops towards any given destination. ECMP allows separate routes to be calculated for each IP Type of Service. All paths of equal cost to a given destination are calculated, and the next hops for all equal-cost paths are inserted into the routing table.

If redundant routes via multiple routing processes (such as OSPF, RIP, BGP, or static routes) exist on your network, the switch defaults to the OSPF-derived route.

OSPF Features Not Supported in This Release

The following OSPF features are not supported in this release:

￿Summarizing external routes

￿Filtering OSPF routes

￿Using OSPF to forward multicast routes

￿Configuring OSPF on non-broadcast multi-access networks (such as frame relay, X.25, or ATM)

BMD00220, October 2010

Chapter 20: OSPF ￿ 287

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Blade ICE G8124-E manual Host Routes for Load Balancing, Ospf Features Not Supported in This Release

G8124-E, G8124 specifications

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