HSRP vs VRRP vs GLBP

February 12, 2016 / Balaji Bandi / 0 Comments

HSRP vs VRRP vs GLBP

Comparison between the three protocols named as HSRP, VRRP and GLBP

Most of the enterprise network you can only use VRRP or HSRP but you can use GLBP because actually load balancing is done by GLBP not with these HSRP and VRRP protocol.

With the use of HSRP, you can have multiple active and standby router on the basis of VLAN. Lets take an example, If i have 4 different VLANs, one is VLAN 2 ,VLAN 3, VLAN 4 and VLAN 5. I have 2 routers R1 and R2. I can manage my traffic with the following options :
  • For VLAN2 : R1 is active and R2 is standby router
  • For VLAN3 : R2 is active and R1 is standby router
  • For VLAN4:  R1 is active and R2 is standby router
  • For VLAN5 : R2 is active and R1 is standby router

 

 

 

Configuration differences between HSRP and VRRP

The differences between both VRRP and HSRP, especially on a Cisco router are very slight.  If your familiar with Configuring HSRP you can easily understand VRRP commands.  Configuring VRRP on Juniper as well as other network equipment can vary significantly depending on the devices.  Many load balancers also support VRRP and their configuration is specific to each of these devices.

Here are some configuration examples as seen on a Cisco router:

 HSRP Configuration Example

R1(config)# interface GigE 0/1
R1(config-if)# ip address 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0
R1(config-if)# standby 1 ip 192.168.1.1
R1(config-if)# standby 1 priority 200
R1(config-if)# standby 1 preempt

R2(config-if)# ip address 192.168.1.3 255.255.255.0
R2(config-if)# standby 1 ip 192.168.1.1
R2(config-if)# standby 1 preempt

VRRP Configuration Example

R1(config)# interface GigE 0/1
R1(config-if)# ip address 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0
R1(config-if)# vrrp 1 ip 192.168.1.1
R1(config-if)# vrrp 1 priority 110

R2(config)# interface GigE 0/1
R2(config-if)# ip address 192.168.1.3 255.255.255.0
R2(config-if)# vrrp 1 ip 192.168.1.1

Notice the lack of a preempt command. This isn’t necessary for VRRP.  It’s enabled by default.

The primary difference between HSRP versus VRRP would be that HSRP is proprietary to Cisco and can only be used on Cisco devices. VRRP is a standards based protocol and is vendor independent allow some flexibility when choosing network devices.

GLBP it is different, the traffic is flowing 4 ways

  • None
  • Weighted
  • Host dependent
  • Round-Robin