James,
I have used both methods and there are advantages and disadvantages to
each depending on the details of your situation. If all things are equal I
would recommend using LACP. The primary reason being simplicity of ongoing
maintenance/management. I had a situation where I needed to add a few more
VLANS to my network and realised that this would change the hash value of my
MSTP. I had to create the VLANS on every switch in the MSTP system to make it
re-converge correctly (even though the VLANS were not required in all
locations). This all turned out OK in the end but in the process I managed to
badly break the entire system as the MSTP trees fragmented during the process
of adding the new VLANS. Luckily I was doing this during a maintenance
window!!! By contrast adding a new VLAN on a LACP system is relatively
painless ( just make sure that you egress the new VLAN/S on both the LAG port
and the underlying physical ports).
Geoff Smith
Technical Administrator
Information, Communications & Technology
Toowoomba Service Centre
T: 07 4688 6649
F: 07 4631 9174
M: 0417 006 504
E: [email protected]
W: http://www.toowoombaRC.qld.gov.au/
Toowoomba Regional Council
PO Box 3021, Toowoomba Village Fair QLD 4350
-----Original Message-----
From: James Andrewartha [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, 25 November 2013 11:58 AM
To: Enterasys Customer Mailing List
Subject: [enterasys] LAG vs MSTP for redundant switch links
Hi list,
I'm setting up dual fibre links between our core and edge switches, and was
pondering whether to set up link aggregation or use MSTP to balance the traffic
across the links. My primary concern is for redundancy, not extra bandwidth (I
just checked cacti, and most don't sustain 100Mb/s).
How do MSTP and LACP compare for failover times?
The other thing about LACP is the config overhead of having to set the
aadminkey on the physical and LAG ports plus ensuring the VLANs match.
Whereas with MSTP I don't have to worry about the LAG port, and can just set a
port priority on the SID to balance the traffic if required.
I'm leaning towards MSTP, but every man and his dog seems to have a
spanning-tree meltdown story. All the switches will be Enterasys (S4 at the
core, B3/B5 at the edge) so you'd think it should all work fine.
Opinions?
Thanks,
--
James Andrewartha
Network & Projects Engineer
Christ Church Grammar School
Claremont, Western Australia
Ph. (08) 9442 1757
Mob. 0424 160 877
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