I am planning to buy a CRS310-8G+2S+IN to use as a core switch for a home office/lab network, however I would like to use it as a L3 core switch. Based on my reading so far, I have seen that L3 HW offloading is available for bridged ports, but I have also seen that 802.3ad bonds can be hardware offloaded, and trying to understand which combination would work with my intended setup.
First off, the target architecture is:
- RB5009: Router for the network performing NAT and firewall
- 2x 3P switches: acting as access layer switches
- CRS310: Core switch interconnecting the two access switches and the RB5009
What I would like to do is have LACP bonds between the CRS310 and each of the devices mentioned above. Then each LACP bond would be assigned a /31 PtP IP address pair with the neighbor device. The CRS310 would be used explicitly for L3 forwarding, no rules, no queues, nothing fancy at all, just a routing protocol (e.g. OSPF), and L3 forwarding; i.e.
- CRS310 =(bond0)=> RB5009 : 172.16.0.0/31
- CRS310 =(bond1)=> Switch1 : 172.16.0.2/31
- CRS310 =(bond2)=> Switch2 : 172.16.0.4/31
So my questions come down to:
- Would this topology be able to forward traffic using L3 HW offloading?
- If so, is there anything specific I need to consider in the configuration?
- Would bondX interfaces need to be added to a bridge with independent PVIDs?
- If they need to be added to a bridge, do I assign IP addresses to the bondX interfaces or to VLAN interfaces part of the bridge?
- If not, then are there any tweaks I can make to my plan to make it more HW offloading friendly?
TIA