From: Paul Lalonde (plalonde2@cogeco.ca)
Date: Fri Mar 14 2003 - 18:05:47 GMT-3
Hi all,
Does anybody know if Cisco currently offers (or plans to offer) the
equivalent functionality of 3Com's XRN switch technology?
As I understand it, XRN allows a cluster of switches to be configured as a
single switch fabric and perform layer 2 and layer 3 link resiliency and
load balancing across disparate switches and paths.
In essence, XRN allows a collection of 3Com switches to work together to
provide a central spanning tree process and EtherChannel-like functionality
across distributed links (sort of like Multichassis Multilink PPP) while, at
the same time, offering VRRP (ie. HSRP) between disparate layer 3 switches.
I like to think of it as MPLS for a switched LAN core.
I know this can be done on a per-VLAN basis, but it's tedious and has to be
done on every single switch.
Does anybody know if Cisco plans to offer something like this? In the
meantime, I don't know of any other way to get multiple Cisco switches to
take advantage of multiple layer 2 paths because STP runs separately between
them.
Paul Lalonde
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