Load balancing with Cisco routers?

[Dynamic]

Wow mac, I would like to stay to start.... Thanks alot....

Now for the first questions you had asked me, I am unsure at this point ... they have not come to install it yet, I am going to assume at this point that it will be two cable modems, with ethernet cables run from them. They will be business lines, therefore i believe that they will have static IP addresses.

Originally when i was looking at the equipment, i was planning on daisy chaining the switches, just because i thought i was only going to have one spare eth port. Now that we have ordered a 4 port switch module for the router, i will run each switch off its own port, as well as seperate them using VLANS.

Like i said i have not really touched it in close to a year , and then i really had no Real life experience ... it was just classes that I had taken, Cisco CCNA 1-4 .... nothing too exciting, and most of the routers we played with were 2500 series and such, which were majorly outdated. I have been playing with the CCNP Boson Net Sim to try to get some of it to work before I implement it ... but the program only allows you to create from one internet connection, not 2, therefore it throws load balancing possibilities out the window.

Now i will have to to some NAT and ACL setups so that the server machine will be allowed to contact both portions of the network (needed to run the cyber cafe software properly). If worse comes to worse, ill post up the config when i get everything settled and you could take a look at it , if its not giberish to you, seeing you haven't looked at it in soo long ... lol. I am hoping that the cable company will only assign a smaller subnet, or a /24 subnet to us, as to not waste too many ip addresses, that would give us 254 to use, and that would be plenty even a /26 should be ok....what is that i forget like 62 computer capabilities?

I will need to look over all of the paper work that they have, and see what they will be getting. This is basically one of thoes, I'm doing this, can you make it work? What do you need to make it work good? And make sure theres as few problems as possible.... They were looking at 300-400$ routers from netgear and linksys at first that had 2 WAN ports, i was like ..... HELL NO .. lol, the only major reliability that you will find that will last will be cisco as long as its configured correctly, it will last a long time, obviously there is a chance for failure, there is always that chance. Cisco just significantly reduces thoes chances.

Anyone ever got that scared feeling in their stomach after they tell someone to buy something ... and they do? I have a 1,000$ router sitting in my bedroom...lol, and it will soon be 1300$ when i add the switch module in.. lol

Thanks for all the help so far Mac , i appreciate it.

[Soul]

for SNMP user getif (http://www.wtcs.org/snmp4tpc/getif.htm) There is also a nice pack of mibs you can download from there. It makes it very easy to find OID and has a built in graphing for the quick testing.

And it's free.

[Dynamic]

free is always good

P.S. ... I completely forgot about the previous thread i started about this ... haha

[Mac]

Ok just a heads up don't go crazy doing any configuring of the router until you get that WIC 4 port Ethernet. the only reason why I said that is if you start configuring and then have to add the Module support within the config file I'm not sure if its gonna wanna rewrite of the config you would have or change the work you would have down. Most Cisco Routers DO NOT do this if you place a new module in but I had a 2621 totally wack out my config file.

You sound like you have a good start though at least for classes. I hated the classes they made me take in the beginning cause like you said they use OLD school stuff but I tell you what that OLD school Stuff make this newer stuff much easier to configure. I Absolutely HATED doing my Lab. They gave me I think it was a 2522 and it had 4 serial lines for have multi Co-Los and Routers on the other end of them. I knew how to do all the work to get them to talk with each other and router properly. The issue I had was they didn't even Know one of the ports were bad and after Digging for about 2 hours on something I thought was my mistake, I had to dig out some old school techniques to troubleshoot why the links were broke. I was getting some packets to pass but the failure was like 68-100% loss. After which I took a screwdriver and popped the cover to find one of the lines broke off and was just touching with gravity. heheh I got off the subject anyhow

The each Switch to each port on the router is actually the way you want to go. I would not chain them, you'd have to get into trunking ports and its not necessary for your application and it actually gives you more work later on trying to pass services you want to various machines.

I myself Love Cisco stuff but wish it was just a little cheaper. it a past post I was talking with someone about their equipment. I've always been a Big fan of their early 5500 Series Switches which included the ability to do ATM (for the rest of you this has nothing to do with a ATM machine that gives you money) as well as do etherchannel groups to run more then 1 Ethernet port to a single device to maximize more the 100Mbps with of transfer. Now with gigabit its even cooler what they are doing with the technology. Anyhow, good choice!


heheh

I'd rather config by terminal then GUI when it comes to Cisco. The gui from what I understand on regular user mode doesnt give you half the options that doing it through the terminal will.

Off the top of my head this is some of the command line that your going to use to get the ports setup manually via terminal. Or at the very lease CLOSE to.

config# interface ethernet0/0
config-if# ip address (first cablemodemIP)(subnetmask)
config-if#no shutfown
config-if#exit
config# interface ethernet0/1
config-if# ip adress (second cablemodemIP)(subnetmask)
config-if#no shutdown
config-if#exit
config#write


this is probably a few steps after setup of the initial password and hostname stuff but routers and switches give you a default Plain initial setup to go through to get you started. I'm sure you already knew that cause in the classes they show you had to use the default one to get the router up and then you hack @ the config file manually.

Ok I'm off to get some grub

[Skull]

enough with this chinese talk!!!

[Dynamic]

yeah i am pretty much all set with that stuff
I should have the switch module tomorow, I will see what happens, seeing this is one of the newer router series.

Router> Enable
Router# Conf t
Router(config)# Int fa0/0
Router(config-if)# ip address 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0
Router(config-if)# no shut
Router(config-if)# ip load-sharing per-packet
Router(config-if)# description Charter Cable Connection 1
Router(config-if)# int fa0/1
Router(config-if)# ip address 10.10.11.1 255.255.255.0
Router(config-if)# ip load-sharing per-packet
Router(config-if)# description Charter Cable Connection 2
Router(config-if)# no shut
Router(config-if)# exit
Router(config-if)# int fa0/3
Router(config-if)# ip address 192.168.100.1 255.255.255.0
Router(config-if)# description To Computer Network Switch
Router(config-if)# no shut
Router(config-if)# exit
Router(config-if)# int fa0/4
Router(config-if)# ip address 192.168.101.1 255.255.255.0
Router(config-if)# description To XBOX360 Network Switch
Router(config-if)# no shut
Router(config-if)# exit
Router(config)# enable password *******
Router(config)# enable secret *******
Router(config)# banner motd @Welcome to the Project Circuit Cisco Router. Authorized Users Only.@
Router(config)# banner login @Project Circuit Inc. If you are not authorized to access this equipment, leave now.@
Router(config)# int line vty 0 15
Router(config-if)#exit
Router(config)# ip dhcp pool computers
Router(config-dhcp)# network 192.168.100.0 /26
Router(config-dhcp)# domain-name projectcircuit.com
Router(config-dhcp)# dns-server 4.2.2.2 4.2.2.4
Router(config-dhcp)# exit
Router(config)# ip dhcp pool xbox360
Router(config-dhcp)# network 192.168.101.0 /26
Router(config-dhcp)# domain-name projectcircuit.com
Router(config-dhcp)# dns-server 4.2.2.2 4.2.2.4


then i have to get into ACLs which ... um no thanks i will only want to type that once never mind the tedeous re-typing./.. lol

[Mac]

I only see one change you might have to make when you put that module in, it most likely won't be a fa0/3... and so on for your 4 10/100 module ports

since its considered a different module from built-in the initial index of the module will change the ports index for that module should start with fa1 since (x)0/(x) is always set aside for built-in ports. This should be what the module sets for the ID.

fa1/0
fa1/1
fa1/2
fa1/3

Then when and if you get the SNMP enabled you can set monitor via that ID or index number based from the MIB/OID Identifier.

Looks go so far. Its funny I went out last night to see what new kind of new books were out for Cisco and I found a REALLY nice command line basics book for CCNA takers. Man we never had this we had to make our own index cards. That was a VERY nice refresher.

Another thing that just popped into my head, I have to actually go back in my book. I'm pretty sure that because you going from Router to unrouted network you might need the route translation or forwarding. If my gut is right you will need a Internal IP for the router which also acts as the gateway. Thinking about it just made me stop because I'm not sure how that is handed off from the load-balancing portion. I think its just automatic though. so I might be overthinking.


the other thing is are you going to get into any access list for stopping unwanted incoming/outgoing ports? I know you didnt mention anything, but figured I would ask.

Anyhow, moving right along...


Cheers

Mac

[Dynamic]

Originally Posted by Dynamic

then i have to get into ACLs which ... um no thanks i will only want to type that once never mind the tedeous re-typing./.. lol

ACLs are access controll lists ... and yes i will be doing that. I have to find out what software will need what ports, and what addresses forwarded ... i know that the main machine that will be the register will need to be able to communicate with both the xbox and the pc network.

I don't have the card yet, i was just putting down random crap for IPs the easy way to check the actual notation will be for me to just do a "show int" and that will give me the names of the interfaces, and allow me to configure them accordingly..... I also didnt know that thing about the 0/1 and such was reserved for the built in ports. .. thats a handy little tidbit. Thanks.

[Mac]

heheh I feel like an idiot, I read your last post and said wait I just asked about the access list and didnt even see your ACL comment... DOH

To add to the 0/1 reserved built-in. There is a catch to that when you get on some of the larger, More module intensive devices where you can have backup and dual managment blades. Depending on your configuration your default module can actually reside on a sub module. Most of the time that 1 slot would then become the (default built-in) which doesn't exactly mean it will be a 0/... On those type of devices which blades the 0/1 style port is actually a virtual circuit that is coded into the managment blade.

In all its pretty neat stuff. Sounds to me like you have everything under control. I'm just happy I can help in anyway. I'm probably gonna look at some of the newer stuff this weekend. I just read now that a 3550 switch CAN do dhcp. Which makes TOTAL sense to me now. This device was the first of its kind to start doing the POE and VIOP stuff 5 years ago. While I did some work on one of them I was unaware that it have dhcp services. That to me is actually very Cool and explains how they would giving clients VIOP DCHP without a server. It never dawned on me, I figured they were using the router... heheh

[Dynamic]

You know whats interesting? I installed the card, im not mad that my config got wiped out.......but it did recognize the new ports as fa0/0/1 fa0/0/2 and so on.... kinda wierd, might be because i actually installed it into the slot 0 expansion bay, dunno .. but still interesting.... more fun for you! something new! lol. I have a feeling that I will have to assign each port on the switch a different VLAN then assign each vlan an IP address and address pool for DHCP and such..... just something that one of my friends had mentioned, i will let you know, i am about to play with it alittle before i head out.

interface FastEthernet0/0
description $ETH-LAN$$ETH-SW-LAUNCH$$INTF-INFO-FE 0$
ip address 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.248
duplex auto
speed auto
!
interface FastEthernet0/1
no ip address
shutdown
duplex auto
speed auto
!
interface FastEthernet0/0/0
!
interface FastEthernet0/0/1
!
interface FastEthernet0/0/2
!
interface FastEthernet0/0/3
!
interface Vlan1
no ip address

EDIT: yup wont let me assign single IP addresses to each port .... VLANS should get interesting .... lol "IP Addresses may not be configured on L2 ports."