FHRP (First Hop Redundancy Protocol)

What is FHRP in Networking?

First Hop Redundancy Protocol (FHRP) is a hop redundancy protocol designed to provide redundancy to the gateway router within the organization’s network by using a virtual IP address and virtual MAC address. So, in case of a failure of the gateway, the backup router will become active, usually within a few seconds.

• Two or more routers should be utilized as a gateway router in order to deploy FHRP.
• Each router’s physical interfaces have a unique IP address.
• Additionally, both routers will have virtual MAC and IP addresses.
• The virtual IP address will serve as the organization’s network’s default gateway IP address for all connected devices.
• One router will be used as a default (gateway router), and the other will be a backup router.

If the default router goes offline, the backup router will take its place to be the gateway router for all the hosts without changing the default gateway address of every host.

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