VRRP: Increasing Reliability and Failover with the Virtual Router Redundance Protocol

2.1. The Case for VRRP

To provide a usage context for VRRP we consider an enterprise network connecting a corporate office to multiple branch offices in different regions. Figure 2-1 represents such an enterprise network.

Figure 2-1. An enterprise network

A cloud—that is, a network of unspecified type and topology, but typically a Wide Area Network (WAN)—connects the branch offices to the corporate office, the headquarters of the enterprise. This WAN may consist of leased circuits, an X.25 packet network, a Frame Relay, or an ATM network. Another possibility is a traditional IBM's Systems Networking Architecture (SNA). But the cloud may also be ...