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FHRP Variants

Besides providing transparent default gateway failover to the endpoints, the FHRP also offers load balancing and Service Level Agreement (SLA) services, among many other features. You can choose the best FHRP protocol for your network depending on different factors and criteria. On Cisco routers and switches, you can use the following protocols:

  • Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP): HSRP is a Cisco proprietary protocol and allows two or more routers in a single group to share a virtual IP address and MAC address. One router is designated as an active unit, while another is a standby router. The active router is responsible for forwarding packets to the virtual IP address. If the active router fails, a standby router takes over.
  • Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP): VRRP is an open standard protocol allowing multiple routers to share a virtual IP address. Just like with HSRP, one of the routers in the group is the master (active) router, while the others are backup routers ready to take over the active role when the master fails.
  • Gateway Load Balancing Protocol (GLBP): GLBP is another Cisco proprietary protocol and the newest among them. Just like the other two FHRP protocols, it allows multiple routers to share a virtual IP address. However, unlike those, it can load balance traffic between them. In GLBP, all routers are active and share the load by assigning different virtual MAC addresses to different hosts.