Step 1: Define a Load-Balancing Policy

Purpose

On the ingress or transit router, you can include a policy statement that performs load balancing on all routes. For information on including a policy statement that performs load balancing on specific routes, see "Configuring Per-Packet Load Balancing" in the JUNOS Routing Protocols Configuration Guide.

Action

On the ingress or transit router, to define a load-balancing policy for all routes, follow these steps:

1. In configuration mode, go to the following hierarchy level:

[edit]

user@host# edit policy-options

2. Define the load-balance policy and action:

[edit policy-options]

user@host# set policy-statement policy-name then load-balance per-packet 

3. Verify and commit the configuration:

user@host# show

user@host# commit 

Sample Output

user@R6> edit 

Entering configuration mode

[edit]

user@R6# edit policy-options 

[edit policy-options]

user@R6# set policy-statement load-balance-traffic then load-balance per-packet 

[edit policy-options]

user@R6# show 

policy-statement load-balance-traffic {

    then {

        load-balance per-packet;

    }

}

[edit policy-options]

user@R6# commit 

commit complete

What It Means

The sample output from ingress router R6 shows the process for configuring load balancing. On an Internet Processor I ASIC, packets with the same parameters are spread across multiple equal-cost next hops; while an Internet Processor II ASIC sends packets with the same parameters to the same next hop, since they are in the same flow. The JUNOS software command to turn on load balancing uses the action load-balance per-packet, which is misnamed in relation to the Internet Processor II ASIC. On the Internet Processor II ASIC, this command actually enables per-flow load balancing.