Router Redundancy Using XRRP 
Overview of XRRP Operation 
XRRP Fail-Over Operation 
If all access to a VLAN from one of the routers in the Protection Domain fails, 
the routing function of that router is automatically transferred to the other 
router in the Protection Domain. The master of the virtual router in the 
Protection Domain sends out multicast advertisements at the XRRP advertise-
ment interval (every 5 seconds by default). If the other router in the Protection 
Domain does not hear an advertisement packet within 3 advertisement inter-
vals, this other router will become the master router, and it takes control of 
the IP address and the MAC address of the failed router. 
Single VLAN Operation 
In figure 12-3, the link between the layer-2 switch and Router-2 fails. As a result, 
Router-2 no longer hears any link signals on VLAN 5 and the communication 
between Router-2 and Router-1 is disabled. Router-1, after not hearing XRRP 
packets from Router-2, will take over the IP addresses from Router-2 for the 
VLAN 5 interfaces and it will take over the XRRP MAC address for Router-2. 
Now Router-1 is the Master for its own IP addresses and the IP addresses for 
Router-2 for VLAN 5, and it is the Master of its own XRRP MAC address and 
the XRRP MAC address for Router-2. As far as the clients are concerned, the 
transfer of router functionality is transparent – they can still get to the servers 
using the same IP addresses and MAC addresses as before. 
Figure 12-3.  XRRP Fail-Over Example 
12-5