Layer 2 Strategies

There are several Layer 2 availability design options. Layer 2 availability designs are desirable because any fault detection and recovery is transparent to the IP layer. Further, the fault detection and recovery can be relatively fast if the correct approach is taken. In this section, we explain the operation and recovery times for three approaches:

  • Trunking and variants based on IEEE 802.3ad

  • SMLT and DMLT, a relatively new and promising approach available from Nortel Networks

  • Spanning Tree, a time-tested and proven Layer 2 availability strategy, originally designed for bridged networks by the brilliant Dr. Radia Perlman from DEC and now with Sun Microsystems.

Trunking Approach to Availability

Link aggregation or trunking increases ...

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