🚀 go-pugleaf

Kimmy,

Fast Ether Channel, as far as I know, provides more bandwidth and achieves
some redundancy.  However, if the module dies; you lose connectivity.  It is
a good network resilience suggestion.  If Fast Ether Channel can span
through different modules or box, it is more safe.

Cisco router has got a HSRP (Hot Standby Routing Protocol) feature to do
switch over upon detecting an interface failure.  I don't have switching
time figures on hand.  But I believe it is quicker than IEEE802.1d Spanning
tree.

Some vendor, say 3Com, they implement backup link on their switches.  It is
proprietary, non-Spanning tree compliant.  Switching is in the region of 100
milli-seconds and below.  This solves your problem.  Give them a ring and
find out.

On host side you may consider a fault-tolerant transceiver.  Chipcom (now
3Com) and Madge has got a lot of these products for 10Mbps ethernet.  I
haven't seen 100Mbps product yet.  May be I am not up-to-date.  Ask the
vendors for ythe 100Mbps fault tolerant tranceiver availability.  It makes
sense to have 100Mbps on server and host side because it is the bottle-neck.

Hope this help.

Regards,
Roger Luk

Kimmy Chan wrote:

> Hi,
>
>     My company's business is highly dependent on network service for
> both internal LAN access and external data feeds. Currently, we don't
> have any redundancy build in any network path to backup the system and
> we are planning to do so. We are using Cisco products (switches, routers
> etc) and some network vendors proposed Fast Ether Channel with spanning
> tree protocol to provide alternate network path. However, our concern is
> the spanning tree protocol which incurs a switch-over time (vary from
> 5sec to 50sec) that will make all connected IP sessions disconnect and
> they need to be established again. Any other better methods avoid the
> session disconnect?
>
> Any comment and suggestion is welcome.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kimmy.