Broadcom Teaming Services: Broadcom NetXtreme II® Network Adapter User Guide
file:///C|/Users/Nalina_N_S/Documents/NetXtremeII/English/teamsvcs.htm[9/5/2014 3:45:08 PM]
Smart Load Balancing and Failover
The Smart Load Balancing™ and Failover type of team provides both load balancing and failover when configured for load
balancing, and only failover when configured for fault tolerance. This type of team works with any Ethernet switch and
requires no trunking configuration on the switch. The team advertises multiple MAC addresses and one or more IP addresses
(when using secondary IP addresses). The team MAC address is selected from the list of load balance members. When the
system receives an ARP request, the software-networking stack will always send an ARP Reply with the team MAC address. To
begin the load balancing process, the teaming driver will modify this ARP Reply by changing the source MAC address to match
one of the physical adapters.
Smart Load Balancing enables both transmit and receive load balancing based on the Layer 3/Layer 4 IP address and
TCP/UDP port number. In other words, the load balancing is not done at a byte or frame level but on a TCP/UDP session basis.
This methodology is required to maintain in-order delivery of frames that belong to the same socket conversation. Load
balancing is supported on 2 to 8 ports. These ports can include any combination of add-in adapters and LAN on Motherboard
(LOM) devices. Transmit load balancing is achieved by creating a hashing table using the source and destination IP addresses
and TCP/UDP port numbers.The same combination of source and destination IP addresses and TCP/UDP port numbers will
generally yield the same hash index and therefore point to the same port in the team. When a port is selected to carry all the
frames of a given socket, the unique MAC address of the physical adapter is included in the frame, and not the team MAC
address. This is required to comply with the IEEE 802.3 standard. If two adapters transmit using the same MAC address, then
a duplicate MAC address situation would occur that the switch could not handle.
NOTE: IPv6 addressed traffic will not be load balanced by SLB because ARP is not a feature of IPv6.
Receive load balancing is achieved through an intermediate driver by sending gratuitous ARPs on a client-by-client basis
using the unicast address of each client as the destination address of the ARP request (also known as a directed ARP). This is
considered client load balancing and not traffic load balancing. When the intermediate driver detects a significant load
imbalance between the physical adapters in an SLB team, it will generate G-ARPs in an effort to redistribute incoming frames.
The intermediate driver (BASP) does not answer ARP requests; only the software protocol stack provides the required ARP
Reply. It is important to understand that receive load balancing is a function of the number of clients that are connecting to
the system through the team interface.
SLB receive load balancing attempts to load balance incoming traffic for client machines across physical ports in the team. It
uses a modified gratuitous ARP to advertise a different MAC address for the team IP Address in the sender physical and
protocol address. This G-ARP is unicast with the MAC and IP Address of a client machine in the target physical and protocol
address respectively. This causes the target client to update its ARP cache with a new MAC address map to the team IP
address. G-ARPs are not broadcast because this would cause all clients to send their traffic to the same port. As a result, the
benefits achieved through client load balancing would be eliminated, and could cause out-of-order frame delivery. This
receive load balancing scheme works as long as all clients and the teamed system are on the same subnet or broadcast
domain.
When the clients and the system are on different subnets, and incoming traffic has to traverse a router, the received traffic
destined for the system is not load balanced. The physical adapter that the intermediate driver has selected to carry the IP
flow carries all of the traffic. When the router sends a frame to the team IP address, it broadcasts an ARP request (if not in
the ARP cache). The server software stack generates an ARP reply with the team MAC address, but the intermediate driver
modifies the ARP reply and sends it over a particular physical adapter, establishing the flow for that session.
The reason is that ARP is not a routable protocol. It does not have an IP header and therefore, is not sent to the router or
default gateway. ARP is only a local subnet protocol. In addition, since the G-ARP is not a broadcast packet, the router will
not process it and will not update its own ARP cache.
The only way that the router would process an ARP that is intended for another network device is if it has Proxy ARP enabled
and the host has no default gateway. This is very rare and not recommended for most applications.
Transmit traffic through a router will be load balanced as transmit load balancing is based on the source and destination IP
address and TCP/UDP port number. Since routers do not alter the source and destination IP address, the load balancing
algorithm works as intended.
Configuring routers for Hot Standby Routing Protocol (HSRP) does not allow for receive load balancing to occur in the adapter
team. In general, HSRP allows for two routers to act as one router, advertising a virtual IP and virtual MAC address. One
physical router is the active interface while the other is standby. Although HSRP can also load share nodes (using different
default gateways on the host nodes) across multiple routers in HSRP groups, it always points to the primary MAC address of
the team.
Generic Trunking
