Automated Evaluation of FHRPs Using Python and GNS3

This repository contains the implementation, datasets, and analysis for the study:

Automated Evaluation of First Hop Redundancy Protocols (VRRP and HSRP) Using Python and GNS3
A. Immen, 2025

The project provides a fully automated and reproducible framework to evaluate the performance of First Hop Redundancy Protocols (FHRPs), specifically VRRP and HSRP, under controlled failure scenarios.

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Abstract

This study introduces a fully automated approach for evaluating First Hop Redundancy Protocols (VRRP and HSRP) using Python and GNS3. Previous comparisons were often limited by small datasets or relied on manual or semi-automated measurements.

To address these limitations, a Python-based automation script was developed that:

• Triggers controlled router failures
• Collects router CPU statistics via Telnet
• Gathers protocol and failover logs in CSV format for analysis

Each protocol was evaluated using 500 automated failover trials. After data cleaning, the final dataset consists of:

• 473 VRRP samples
• 455 optimized HSRP samples
• 431 default HSRP samples

Results show that:

• With default timers, VRRP outperforms HSRP overall
• HSRP with optimized timers outperforms VRRP in failover speed, at the cost of increased packet loss and higher CPU utilization

This repository includes the automation scripts, datasets, and Jupyter notebooks used for analysis, enabling reproducible experiments for network engineers and researchers.

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Repository Structure

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├── scripts/ # Python automation scripts
├── datasets/ # Collected CSV datasets
├── notebooks/ # Jupyter notebooks for analysis and visualization
├── gns3/ # GNS3 project files and topology
└── README.md

Reproducibility

All experiments are designed to be reproducible.
You can rerun the automation scripts to generate new datasets or modify protocol timers and topology parameters for further research.

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Citation

If you use this work in academic or professional research, please cite:

A. Immen, “Automated Evaluation of FHRPs Using Python and GNS3,” GitHub repository, 2025. Available: https://github.com/arianimmen/First-Hop-Redundancy-Protocols-Research/