How common is HP Mesh?

[RicN]

I am just curios, do you use the HP Mesh feature in your networks?

The technology seems to be good, but since it seems to be quite undocumented and propriatary with very few troubleshooting tools (just "show mesh") I have so far not used it.

What do you say?

[André Beck]

Hi RicN,

I have one customer who uses mesh, but that's historical and about to be phased out with a new design that focuses on L3 switched core. At any other customer site where I was involved in the design, I vetoed meshing, as I cannot stand proprietary extensions to L2. They are an absolute pain when multi-vendor is becoming a demand later, resulting in an effective vendor lock in. And meshing is more or less out of fashion in design, it's L2 and campus spanning by heart.

I found the most compelling argument against meshing in customer design discussions to be the fact that ProCurve boxes will either do meshing, or they will be L3 switches (IP routers), but not both at the same time. So in a multi tiered distribution block with L3/L2 demarcation at the distribution switches (DS), a niche for it to survive would be the L2 cloud below the DS, but you cannot use it there as the DS cannot route (to the core) and mesh (to the access layer) at the same time.

HTH,
Andre.

[Mohieddin Kharnoub]

Hi

HP ProCurve Mesh technology is meant to be used for Redundancy & Load Balancing.

Using multiple links between all the L2 Switches, ProCurve Mesh manage all the links to provide Redundancy and Load balancing, but L3 can't be enabled on any of the Switches.

Nowadays MSTP (L2) + VRRP (L3) are used together to achieve such technique.

Meshing is faster in terms of High availability than MSTP with VRRP, but L3 can't be enabled.

Good Luck !!!

[RicN]

Thank you both for good answers!

Is HP meshing an old technology?

[Mohieddin Kharnoub]

Yes, its been used for a long time with some of the ProCurve Products such as 5300,

http://www.hp.com/rnd/pdfs/Switch_Meshing_Paper_Tech_Brief.pdf

Good Luck !!!

[RicN]

Hello!

>Yes, its been used for a long time with
>some of the ProCurve Products such as 5300

Is that something like three years, or has it been available for 5 or 10 years? (Just trying to get a general feeling.)

[Mohieddin Kharnoub · Accepted solution]

more than 5 :)

[RicN]

>more than 5 :)

That's what I wanted to know! Thanks.

[Jeff Carrell]

meshng has been around since switch 4000...+10yrs and change...

is also avail in provision asic swithces...

not deployed alot in my travels, but as other have said, provides for a high perf/avail L2 core...routers "hang off" the L2 core...

5 max switches in a "fully meshed" design, 8 switches max in a "partial mesh" design...

hth...jeff

[André Beck]

RicN,

Meshing is (AFAIK) the only proprietary L2 implementation left over from a lot of such attempts that date prior to 802.1Q becoming finalized. That means it's almost a teen ;)

Interestingly it still persists, while others like Cabletron SecureFast died away years ago.

HTH,
Andre.