I configured object tracking on R1 to decrement the priority below the priority of R2, in the event that R1 line-protocol on its Internet-facing interface Gig0/1 goes down. After shutting down Gig0/1, the priority of R1 does indeed decrement below R2 as expected.
However, R2 does not take over as the Active router, unless I additionally shutdown the LAN-facing interface of R1, on which the standby commands are configured. The reason I configured object tracking was that I thought it would provide a means for R2 to detect an Internet-facing issue and take over when R1 loses connection to its path to the Internet, but after labbing it out, I see that it doesn't work that way, and traffic still goes to R1 (as seen in traceroute), bounces back to R2 and finds its way to the Internet via R2. This is no different than if I'd not even configured object tracking.
Object tracking was advertised as having some value to be used with HSRP to add additional detection to the Internet-facing interface, but it seems to do nothing practically useful at all, other than change the priority on the active rotuer. It doesn't seem to precipitate an actual failover to of traffic to the Standby router, unless the LAN-facing interface also goes down.
Please explain what I'm missing, or is it as useless as it seems?
