Split MLT on Passport 8600

[pp8k]

Split MLT is Nortel's next generation Multilink trunking and offers the ability to terminate multilink trunks on two seperate switches. It also offers load balancing from remote wiring closets to central core switches and can in certain configurations avoid the use of spanning tree for resilient network provision.

You will need to use Release 3.2 software and try to avoid using configurations with only one CPU as there are some issues with SMLT and these configurations.

 

[ecuamer]

I have recently deployed SMLT with (2) 8600 going to 10 separate 450 stacks. We are at this time using two fibers for the IST trunk between Passport but may us 4 fiber ports in the future for the IST.
when we were testing out one of the closets we pulled each fiber one at a time and all appeared fine but then when we downed the backup Passport we noticed that the Config.cfg file got corrupted and didn't want to come up.
Besides the little set backs all the stacks are up and smlt and VRRP are running top notch.
Beautiful thing with SMLT is if a fiber pair goes out there is almost not drops and the network does have to go through its 90 second spanning tree logithmic that regular MLT endures.