Nortel SMLT -- Cisco equivalent

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a nortel lab here in
Michigan. They were showing us their 8600 switch and all the
wonderful things that it can do. One of the most interesting features
is SMLT -- Split Multi Link Trunking.

You can have two fibre lines running from a switch stack to the core.
One plugs into the first 8600 and the other in the second 8600. Both
lines are apparently running in a load balanced configuration. The
techs pulled the plug on one piece of fibre and the lag was one ping.
Plugged that back in and again only a one ping lag. He did the second
line and the same result.

My question is this. Does cisco have anything that resembles this
technology. Nortel tells me that this is not based on Spanning Tree
at all but some other technology that they have perfected. This of
course all happens at Layer 2.

thanks

 

We had that capability with Develcon WAN routers in the early 90's. Of
course it was a remnant of the DevelNet technology from the 80's ... not
that this helps a Cisco shop

 

We had that capability with Develcon WAN routers in the early 90's. Of

not sure about cisco, but 3com 49xx or 40x0 w/ XRN does LACP across
units. I have tested two 3com 4900 + XRN in distributed fabric and got
subsecond switch over (120 ms delay in ping round trip vs. 10 ms in
normal operation)

 

You have reached the same conclusion as i: no cisco does not have an
equivalent for this.
quite shocking he

on the new 3750 switches they have some features that "resembles" it, but
its not really the same......


The basis of Nortel Split MLT is that the two backbone 8600 routers appear
as ONE switch to the access
switch (stack). And the two uplink are just a channel (cisco terminology).
This is possible due to a special dedicated link between the 8600 (need
1Gbit), called SMLT......

Geert

 

just Check Ether channel from Cisco.....

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk389/tk213/tsd_technology_support_protocol_home.html

Cj

 

Cisco has got Virtual Switching which kills SMLT!

Refer to my document in here :

www . net-grp . com

and search for VSS

 

Nortel/Avaya switch clustering (SMLT) kills Cisco VSS
Nortel has on all layer 3 switches
Cisco only on 6500 and 720 sup for legacy hardware.
Nortel provided on all existing layer 3 switches in later code.
Also Nortel/Avaya clustering way easier to setup than cisco.

 

Or you could use regular LACP to multiple stacked smaller switches, this would give you the same result.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products...s_configuration_example09186a00806cb982.shtml