Can VRRP Virtual address be used as static route default next hop address?

[Craddockc]

Community,

I had a question about the validity of using VRRP to facilitate redundancy of a next hop address from a static route. I understand that VRRP is generally used to act as a redundancy for default gateways, but can we also use it for redundancy for next hop router address referenced in a static route by a downstream router?

For example: If I had two routers with physical address 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 and they were running VRRP sharing the virtual address 10.0.0.3 with 10.0.0.1 being the Master with higher priority. I then have a static route from a downstream router that says 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.0.0.3. Would that work?

I dont see why not as the downstream router would initially have to send a broadcasted ARP request for the MAC address of the 10.0.0.3 address which would only be responded to by the Master if its up with the MAC Address of 00-00-5e-00-01-vrid.

What are your thoughts and experience with this scenario? Thanks.

[Paul Chapman · Accepted solution]

Hi -

In a simple static route scenario, yes it is valid and it prevents the downstream device from having to ARP out again when a failover occurs.  If you have a more complex setup where you want to do equal cost routing, then the VRRP is not really your best bet.  For static routing, you would want to use GLBP instead as that would force both load balancing and redundancy.  More realistically, you would want a dynamic routing protocol (EIGRP or OSPF).

So, will it work? Yes.  Is it the best design? Depends on what your goals are.

PSC

[Craddockc]

Paul,

Thank you for your reply.

This actually is a special scenario where I am setting up redundant "gateways" between a Cisco 2901 that is connected to the MPLS and an AT&T NetGate device that will serve as a backup incase the MPLS router goes down. Right now the default gateway for the subnets are on the downstream 3560 switch which then has a static route just sending everything unknown to the MPLS router (think a small branch site setup). We are setting up an AT&T netgate device which creates a VPN tunnel over a regular internet connection back to the MPLS. I can VRRP between them so if the MPLS router goes down the netgate will already be online and can take over the routing duties back to the MPLS until the MPLS router (VRRP Master) comes back online. So instead of having to change the default gateway of all subnets, I decided to see if I can just use the VRRP virtual address as the next hop address in the default static route on the switch.

Thanks again!