Redundant networking? Feature request

[macbrush]

I am working for a Radio station which consists 10 PowerStation powered studios and a couple of more with older Studio Engines. When I joined this company, those PowerStations were connected to the core switch by single ethernet link, my first task was to made their second port into redundancy mode, after much of trail and error, I finally figured out the setup which wasn't exactly by the book. The down side was that it wasn't a perfect solution for real time broadcast, sometimes the link would switch to secondary port due to link error (cabling problem, interference etc) which would caused over 20 seconds of dead air which wouldn't happen otherwise if left the secondary gigabit port empty since there would be nowhere to switch over to.

xNodes were a leap forward in terms of redundancy compare to the PowerStation. No more setting up nightmare, though its still not perfect, it would cause MAC flapping when both ports are connected, though manageable. The major issue is that it still need 10 seconds of down time whenever switching between the two ports.

I seriously doubt the wisdom behind using spanning-tree in real time production environment, even with rapid-pvst it takes over 3 seconds of down time. Not to mention that because of the nature of spanning tree protocol, it severely limited the network maintenance options due to the danger of spanning tree reset.

The best solution would be implement port-channel (NIC teaming). If the ethernet module supports it, it would just be a matter of coming up with the proper driver. With port-channel, we can completely do away spanning tree nightmare, and allow live maintenance on many aspects such as re-routing cables.

I hope somebody is listening

[AXIA_milos]

Thank you for your feedback macbrush.