Abstract
High level of availability can be expensive to maintain, but lack of availability may also increase cost as it may damage the reputation of the business. Which led to the development of techniques that reduce downtime until it became transparent to the user. First hop redundancy protocols (FHRP) are an essential tool for improving the availability of IP networks. The first hop redundancy protocols are protocols used to manage and maintain network default gateway routers by using one or more redundant routers that will take over in case of default router failure. Each protocol has its own purpose. FHRP was developed to reduce traffic loss. In this paper we present the first hop redundancy concept and the means for its realization in IPv6 network. We evaluate three FHRP protocols, namely, the Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRPv2), Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRPv3), and Gateway Load Balancing (GLBP). The First Hop Redundancy Protocols will be implemented, tested, optimized, and compared to one another in terms of convergence time, packet loss and CPU utilization, by using GNS3 simulator and Wireshark the results of comparison will be provided and analyzed. The performances of the three FHRP protocols are analyzed, and their functionalities are compared. The comparison results highlight which protocol performed the best in each scenario and which protocol can be considered as the best among the three FHRPs.