Router BVI's - Bridged Virtual Interfaces in Cisco IOS
Building more redundancy and more BW into your router connection
BVI's on a router are much like a port-channel on a switch. Creating a BVI between 2 Ethernet interfaces allows them to be bundled together. This allows for more redundancy between the switch and router and also allows for more available bandwidth since the traffic will be load shared across the 2 links.
Say for instance you have 2 switches stacked together... if you only have 1 connection to the router and that switch fails or needs some maintenance, your connection to the outside would go down. By bridging the 2 Ethernet interfaces together on the router you can connect 1 link to each switch and port-channel them together on your switch stack so they appear as 1 bundled connection the the router. Now, regardless of which switch in the stack is powered off, your connection to your router will stay up.
conf t
!
bridge irb <-- This command enables the IRB feature on this router.
!
interface Fa 0
no ip address
bridge-group 1 <-- The interface Fa 0 is added to bridge-group 1
!
Interface Fa 1
no ip address
bridge-group 1 <-- The interface Fa 1 is also added to bridge-group 1
!
interface BVI1 <-- Creates the virtual interface to which the IP address is assigned and routing is performed from
ip address 192.168.10.1 255.255.255.0
!
bridge 1 protocol ieee <-- Enables bridging on this router
bridge 1 route ip <-- Enables routing on the Bridge Interface
!
end
Building more redundancy and more BW into your router connection
BVI's on a router are much like a port-channel on a switch. Creating a BVI between 2 Ethernet interfaces allows them to be bundled together. This allows for more redundancy between the switch and router and also allows for more available bandwidth since the traffic will be load shared across the 2 links.
Say for instance you have 2 switches stacked together... if you only have 1 connection to the router and that switch fails or needs some maintenance, your connection to the outside would go down. By bridging the 2 Ethernet interfaces together on the router you can connect 1 link to each switch and port-channel them together on your switch stack so they appear as 1 bundled connection the the router. Now, regardless of which switch in the stack is powered off, your connection to your router will stay up.
conf t
!
bridge irb <-- This command enables the IRB feature on this router.
!
interface Fa 0
no ip address
bridge-group 1 <-- The interface Fa 0 is added to bridge-group 1
!
Interface Fa 1
no ip address
bridge-group 1 <-- The interface Fa 1 is also added to bridge-group 1
!
interface BVI1 <-- Creates the virtual interface to which the IP address is assigned and routing is performed from
ip address 192.168.10.1 255.255.255.0
!
bridge 1 protocol ieee <-- Enables bridging on this router
bridge 1 route ip <-- Enables routing on the Bridge Interface
!
end