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User Guide NetXtreme II
January 2010
Broadcom Corporation
Document ENGSRVT52-CDUM100-R Load Balancing and Fault Tolerance Page 13
NOTE: IPv6 is supported for addressing, but is not supported for load balancing.
The Smart Load Balancing type of team works with all Ethernet switches without having to configure the switch ports to any
special trunking mode. Only IP traffic is load-balanced in both inbound and outbound directions. IPX traffic is load-balanced
in the outbound direction only. Other protocol packets are sent and received through one primary interface only. Failover for
non-IP traffic is supported only for Broadcom network adapters. The Generic Trunking type of team requires the Ethernet
switch to support some form of port trunking mode (for example, Cisco's Gigabit EtherChannel or other switch vendor's Link
Aggregation mode). The Generic Trunking type of team is protocol-independent, and all traffic should be load-balanced and
fault-tolerant.
NOTE: If you do not enable LiveLink™ when configuring teams, disabling Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) or
enabling Port Fast at the switch is recommended. This minimizes the downtime due to the spanning tree loop
determination when failing over. LiveLink mitigates such issues.
TEAMING AND LARGE SEND OFFLOAD/CHECKSUM OFFLOAD SUPPORT
Large Send Offload (LSO) and Checksum Offload are enabled for a team only when all of the members support and are
configured for the feature.
Table 1: Smart Load Balancing
Operating System Failover/Fallback — All Broadcom Failover/Fallback — Multivendor
Protocol IP IPv6 IPX NetBEUI IP IPv6 IPX NetBEUI
Windows 2000 Server Y N/S Y Y Y N/S N N
Windows Server 2003 SP2 Y N/S Y N/S Y N/S N N/S
Windows Server 2008 Y N/S Y N/S Y N/S N N/S
Windows Server 2008 R2 Y N/S Y N/S Y N/S N N/S
Operating System Load Balance — All Broadcom Load Balance — Multivendor
Protocol IP IPv6 IPX NetBEUI IP IPv6 IPX NetBEUI
Windows 2000 Server Y N/S Y N Y N/S N N
Windows Server 2003 SP2 Y N/S Y N/S Y N/S N N/S
Windows Server 2008 Y N/S Y N/S Y N/S N N/S
Windows Server 2008 R2 Y N/S Y N/S Y N/S N N/S
Legend Y = yes
N = no
N/S = not supported