HSRP and
Translations
What is FHRP?
• FHRP means First Hop Redundancy Protocol. FHRP is used to prevent
network failure at a default gateway.
• This is achieved by configuring multiple routers with the same IP
address, thus presenting an illusion of a single virtual router to the hosts.
• The IP address of the virtual router is configured on all hosts in that
network or subnet as their default gateway.
Various FHRP Protocols
• Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)
• Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)
• Gateway Load Balancing Protocol (GLBP)
Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)
• HSRP is a Cisco proprietary protocol that enables the network
engineer to configure multiple redundant routers that exist on the
same subnet, each can be used as a gateway for the devices on the
subnet.
• Without HSRP, each of the devices on the subnet would need to be
individually configured to use a specific gateway, effectively not
providing redundancy but limiting the number of clients that would be
affected if a router were to go down.
• With HSRP, a group of routers (gateways) will be configured together,
and a single HSRP virtual IP address will be created that are used by
the devices on the subnet.
• The different routers in the HSRP will
communicate to select a single active
gateway that handles all live traffic. At this
point, a single standby gateway is also
selected.
• This standby gateway communicates with the
active gateway via multicast and will detect
should the active gateway fail.
• When this happens, one of the standby
gateways will take over the duties of the
active gateway and continue traffic forwarding
without much (if any) delay. When this
happens, a new standby gateway is also
selected.
What is Translation?
• To access the Internet, one public IP address is needed, but we can use a
private IP address in our private network. The idea of NAT is to allow multiple
devices to access the Internet through a single public address. To achieve
this, the translation of a private IP address to a public IP address is required.
• Network Address Translation (NAT) is a process in which one or more local
IP address is translated into one or more Global IP address and vice versa in
order to provide Internet access to the local hosts.
• PAT is a process where it does the translation of port numbers i.e. masks
the port number of the host with another port number, in the packet that will
be routed to the destination. It then makes the corresponding entries of IP
address and port number in the table.
Types of Translations:
1) Static NAT –
• In this, a single unregistered (Private) IP address is mapped with a
legally registered (Public) IP address i.e one-to-one mapping between
local and global addresses. This is generally used for Web hosting.
• These are not used in organizations as there are many devices that
will need Internet access and to provide Internet access, a public IP
address is needed.
• Suppose, if there are 3000 devices that need access to the Internet,
the organization has to buy 3000 public addresses that will be very
costly.
2) Dynamic NAT –
• In this type of NAT, an unregistered IP address is translated into a registered
(Public) IP address from a pool of public IP addresses.
• If the IP address of the pool is not free, then the packet will be dropped as
only a fixed number of private IP addresses can be translated to public
addresses.
• Suppose, if there is a pool of 2 public IP addresses then only 2 private IP
addresses can be translated at a given time.
• If 3rd private IP address wants to access the Internet then the packet will be
dropped therefore many private IP addresses are mapped to a pool of public
IP addresses.
• NAT is used when the number of users who want to access the Internet is
fixed. This is also very costly as the organization has to buy many global IP
addresses to make a pool.
3) Port Address Translation (PAT) –
• In this, many local (private) IP addresses can be translated to a
single registered IP address.
• Port numbers are used to distinguish the traffic i.e., which traffic
belongs to which IP address.
• This is most frequently used as it is cost-effective as thousands of
users can be connected to the Internet by using only one real global
(public) IP address.
