Broadcom NetXtreme BCM57 Series, User Manual

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Teaming NetXtreme User Guide
Broadcom
®
April 2017 • 2CS57XX-CDUM514-R Page 101
The Smart Load Balancing type of team works with all Ethernet switches without having to configure the switch
ports to any special trunking mode. Only IP traffic is load-balanced in both inbound and outbound directions.
Other protocol packets are sent and received through one primary interface only. Failover for non-IP traffic is
supported only for Broadcom network adapters. The Generic Trunking type of team requires the Ethernet switch
to support some form of port trunking mode (for example, Cisco's Gigabit EtherChannel or other switch vendor's
Link Aggregation mode). The Generic Trunking type of team is protocol-independent, and all traffic should be
load-balanced and fault-tolerant.
LiveLink™ Functionality
LiveLink™ functionality is a feature of BASP that is available only for the Smart Load Balancing™ and Failover
type of teaming. The purpose of LiveLink is to detect network connectivity beyond the switch and to route traffic
only through team members that have a live link. This function is accomplished though the teaming software
(see
Configuring LiveLink for a Smart Load Balancing and Failover and SLB (Auto-Fallback Disable) Team ). The
teaming software periodically probes (issues a link packet from each team member) one or more specified target
network adapter(s). The probe target(s) responds when it receives the link packet. If a team member does not
detect a response within a specified amount of time after a specified number of retries, the teaming software
discontinues passing traffic through that team member. Later, if that team member begins to detect a response
from a probe target, this indicates that the link has been restored, and the teaming software automatically
resumes passing traffic through that team member. LiveLink works only with TCP/IP.
LiveLink™ functionality is supported in both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems. For similar
functionality in Linux operating systems, refer to Channel Bonding in your Linux documentation.
Teaming and Large Send Offload/Checksum Offload Support
Large Send Offload (LSO) and Checksum Offload are enabled for a team only when all of the members support
and are configured for the feature.
Note: If you do not enable LiveLink™ when configuring teams, disabling Spanning Tree Protocol
(STP) at the switch is recommended. This minimizes the downtime due to the spanning tree loop
determination when failing over. LiveLink mitigates such issues.