Professional paper

Alternative to using VRRP for Mutual Next-Hop Redundancy

Tomislav Trohar orcid.org/0000-0002-8260-9383 ; University College Algebra, Zagreb, Croatia
Silvio Papić ; University College Algebra, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

In a situation where customers end locations and its central infrastructure servers are connected over service provider MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) network infrastructure, each customer site, including the central one is one MPLS connection. To ensure redundancy for the central location where the customer servers are located, most companies use two MPLS connections so that if one fails other will take over the traffic. For various reasons, some companies have not implemented a dynamic routing protocol, and all of their routing decisions are based on static routes, which is not a good solution. Such companies for purposes of routing redundancy choose to use FHRP (First Hop Redundancy Protocols) protocols in combination with interface tracking in both directions to ensure failover when needed. This combination is used to ensure redundant two-way communication that is resistant to one link or one device failure. In this paper, we describe the method of implementing VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) protocol in combination with interface tracking mechanism to ensure the availability of key elements of customer networks and present shortcomings of this model on the availability of customer infrastructure. Also, we will compare this solution with the conventional solution using a dynamic routing protocol.

Keywords

VRRP; interface tracking; next-hop redundancy; MPLS; routing

Hrčak ID:

200728

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/200728

Publication date:

31.1.2018.

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