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Alteon Application Switch Operating System Application Guide
WAN Link Load Balancing
632
Document
ID:
RDWR-ALOS-V2900_AG1302
Alteon provides a solution for enterprises to optimize use of Internet connectivity. This
comprehensive solution helps enterprises to direct traffic over the best connection to maximize
performance, maximize corporate bandwidth investments, and effectively remove existing
deployment and management barriers for multi-homed networks.
Benefits of WAN Link Load Balancing
Traditionally, corporations have used Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to determine the optimal path
of the WAN link for load balancing traffic. However, Table 54 shows the advantages of implementing
WAN link load balancing versus using BGP.
WAN link load balancing benefits your network in a number of ways:
•
Performance is improved by balancing the request load across multiple WAN links—
More WAN links can be added at any time to increase processing power.
•
Increased efficiency for WAN link use and network bandwidth—Alteon is aware of the
shared services provided by your WAN link pool and can then balance user traffic among the
available WAN links. Important WAN link traffic gets through more easily, reducing user
competition for connections on overused links. For even greater control, traffic is distributed
according to a variety of user-selectable rules.
•
Increased reliability—Reliability is increased by providing multiple paths from the clients to
Alteon and by accessing a pool of WAN links. If one WAN link fails, the others can take up the
additional load.
•
Increased scalability of services—As traffic increases and the WAN link pool's capabilities
are saturated, new WAN links can be added to the pool transparently.
•
Ease of maintenance—WAN links can be added or removed dynamically, without interrupting
traffic.
Identifying Your Network Needs
WAN link load balancing addresses the following vital network concerns:
•
A single WAN link no longer meets the demand for increased traffic.
•
The connection from your LAN to the Internet overloads the WAN link's capacity.
•
Your WAN links must remain available even in the event of a link failure.
•
Your WAN links are being used as a way to do business and for taking orders from customers. It
must not become overloaded or unavailable.
•
You want to use multiple WAN links or hot-standby WAN links for maximum server uptime.
•
You must be able to scale your applications to meet client and LAN request capacity.
•
You cannot afford to continue using an inferior load-balancing technique, such as DNS round-
robin or a software-only system.
Table 54: WAN Link Load Balancing Versus BGP
WAN Link Load Balancing
BGP
•
Easy to configure
•
Redundancy—If one of the ISP links go down,
then the other ISP link takes over.
•
Backup—You can use a low speed ISP link as a
backup for a high speed ISP link.
•
If ISP reaches its session limit, Alteon deletes it
from the group.
•
Easy to manage
•
Complex to implement
•
Laborious to manage
•
Difficult to get an autonomous system
number
•
Does not allow you to monitor the WAN
links for load, speed, or health of
devices on the other end of the link