It was a smallish chapter that covered redundancy and load balancing options available on the first hop. We introduced you to first-hop redundancy protocols including VRRP, HSRP, and GLBP. VRRP and HSRP are primarily used for redundancy on the first hop. GLBP is the preferred choice as it is simpler to configure for load balancing also providing gateway redundancy. We covered configuration and verification of these protocols and also compared their different features.

Toward the end of the chapter, we covered Cisco IOS NetFlow and its basic configuration. NetFlow has emerged as an important technology for monitoring network statistics on remote Cisco devices from central NetFlow collector software. We also mentioned a couple of freeware NetFlow applications that you can download and install.