Cisco Backup Interface for Multicast Redundancy

Hello,

I am trying to find a way to configure a backup ethernet interface on my cisco switch. The scenario is this...

I have a non-cisco router upstream that is doing IGMP (PIM) on a per port/per card basis. This router has 2 cards, both would be active all the time. I want to be able to take these two ports into a switch, and on the switch configure one port to be the primary link, and the second to be the backup link. I need to have the second port's link state to be down, and then if the first port's link goes down, the second port will come up and become active.

I cannot use STP or Flex Link because I need the second port's link state to be down. The reason for this is because if the second port is in the up state, and the first link goes down, the IGMP table does not switch over to the second port. This causes an outage until my device members of a multicast stream resend a IGMP membership report to that second card/port. If that port was in the down state and automatically came up on a failure, the router floods that port with all multicast traffic and sends out an all client query to prune any streams back nobody is joined to.

Is there any way to configure a pair of ports where the link state is down on the backup link? Thanks in advance.

This will be hard to do when your devices don't support Gratuitous ARP.

Hello,

I am trying to find a way to configure a backup ethernet interface on my cisco switch. The scenario is this...

I have a non-cisco router upstream that is doing IGMP (PIM) on a per port/per card basis. This router has 2 cards, both would be active all the time. I want to be able to take these two ports into a switch, and on the switch configure one port to be the primary link, and the second to be the backup link. I need to have the second port's link state to be down, and then if the first port's link goes down, the second port will come up and become active.

I cannot use STP or Flex Link because I need the second port's link state to be down. The reason for this is because if the second port is in the up state, and the first link goes down, the IGMP table does not switch over to the second port. This causes an outage until my device members of a multicast stream resend a IGMP membership report to that second card/port. If that port was in the down state and automatically came up on a failure, the router floods that port with all multicast traffic and sends out an all client query to prune any streams back nobody is joined to.

Is there any way to configure a pair of ports where the link state is down on the backup link? Thanks in advance.