Resilient link?

[ericfjchen]

What is resilient link? What should I be careful while I use a switch?

[Ardon]

Hi Eric,

That is not something one can answer that easily but..........

Resilient Networks that are able to reconverge by using Standby Links which, in a normal non problematic network are not forwarding traffic, but kick in when active links go down. It is all about redundancy and how quickly one can reconverge in case of a link failure. Different means of accomplishing this like STP (802.1d), RSTP (802.1W), MSTP (802.1s) at Layer 2 or HP's propriatary Layer 2 protocol: Meshing. But also on Layer 3 you can have redundancy by means of router failover in case the primary one fails (transparent to clients in the network as their Gateway does not change). An example on Layer 3 redundancy would be VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy), XRRP (HP) or HSRP (Hot Stanby Routing Protocol by Cisco but propriatry).
For more info on resilience look at http://www.roke.co.uk/defence/resilient_networks.asp

Regards, Ardon