VRRP

Someone today was running VRRP on a box as a clustering / load balancing mechanism.

Did some reading to discover that this is in a family called  FHRP - First Hop Redundancy Protocols.

There are three 'competing' protocols in this class:
VRRP - Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol
GLBP - Gateway Load Balancing Protocol
HSRP - Hot Standby Router Protocol

VRRP is the only open (IEEE) one (HSRP is Cisco).
UPDATE: NOTE: Both Cisco and IBM are claiming patents on VRRP, based on what I saw on Wikipedia for VRRP. But per Wikipedia, some executive at Cisco has made a statement (to Wikipedia, or publicly such that Wikipedia has listed it on the site) that they will not be enforcing patent claims. 

I am reading comparisons, but so far they look very similar with VRRP being slightly more advantageous(?) with faster hello.

Next, we will examine VRRP implementations.