LAN zone failover and load balancing

Hi Brian,

What brand and model of switches are you using? Most manufactures allow a LAG to be created across stack or virtual chassis members. I use this feature on Juniper EX series switches. You can have up to 8 ports in a LAG on most Juniper switches. Those 8 ports can be from any virtual chassis member. You just create a LAG on the XG with ports 1 and 5 and then do the same on your switch stack assuming is supports that feature.

www.juniper.net/.../virtual-chassis-ex4200-aggregated-ethernet.html

These are Netgear ProSafe switches.

These support LAG so that would handle my load balancing. My understanding may be a bit off, but as I understand it with LAG all connections would need to be operational all the time. If one connection goes down the LAG group is no longer able to keep traffic flowing on the remaining links.

Sorry Michael, should have read the link you provided before replying.

I'm not that familiar with Netgear switches so I am not sure if they are true stacking or just logical stacking meaning all switches are managed as one. True hardware stacking creates a virtual chassis and allows the switches to share a backplane. If you switches are not true hardware stacking, then you would not be able to created a LAG using a port from each one. You could create some redundancy from creating a LAG in just one switch though and it will load balance. LAG interface will work with only one port up. If you give me the model of your switches, I will be glad to look them up and see what they can do.

Thanks Michael! Your reply helped me.