Subject: Protocol Action: 'Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol Version 3 for IPv4 and IPv6' to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:29:07 -0800 (PST)

The IESG has approved the following document:

- 'Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol Version 3 for IPv4 and IPv6 '
   <draft-ietf-vrrp-unified-spec-05.txt> as a Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol Working Group. 

The IESG contact persons are Adrian Farrel and Ross Callon.

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-vrrp-unified-spec-05.txt

Technical Summary

   This memo defines the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) for
   IPv4 and IPv6.  It is version three (3) of the protocol and it is
   based on VRRP (version 2) for IPv4 that is defined in RFC 3768 and on
   draft-ieft-vrrp-ipv6-spec-08.txt.  VRRP specifies an election
   protocol that dynamically assigns responsibility for a virtual router
   to one of the VRRP routers on a LAN.  The VRRP router controlling the
   IPv4 or IPv6 address(es) associated with a virtual router is called
   the Master, and forwards packets sent to these IPv4 or IPv6
   addresses.  VRRP Master routers are configured with virtual IPv4 or
   IPv6 addresses and VRRP Backup routers infer the address family of
   the virtual addresses being carried based on the transport protocol.
   Within a VRRP router the virtual routers in each of the IPv4 and IPv6
   address families are a domain unto themselves and do not overlap.
   The election process provides dynamic fail over in the forwarding
   responsibility should the Master become unavailable.  For IPv4, the
   advantage gained from using VRRP is a higher availability default
   path without requiring configuration of dynamic routing or router
   discovery protocols on every end-host.  For IPv6, the advantage
   gained from using VRRP for IPv6 is a quicker switch over to back up
   routers than can be obtained with standard IPv6 Neighbor Discover
   (RFC 4861) mechanisms.

Working Group Summary

   No. The technology is widely deployed.

Document Quality

   Again, the technology is widely deployed with numerous interoperable
   implementations. The technology has been around for 10 or so years.

Personnel

   Mukesh Gupta is the document shepherd
   Adrian Farrel is the responsible AD