Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) Fabric Routing

Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) has one master router that does L3 routing and one or more backup routers that perform L2 forwarding of packets toward the master router, as per VRRP RFC specification. With this method, L3 routing capability of backup routers goes unused. This also causes loss of bandwidth in the links that connect master and backup routers. This issue is present in any topology where host traffic is flowing using the backup routers. With multiple backup routers, traffic from hosts attached to some backup routers have to traverse multiple links to reach the master router. This causes loss of bandwidth in multiple links toward the master.