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The article presents a crash course on router redundancy protocols as well as the applications of routing protocols, such as Open Shortest Path First-Equal Cost Multipath, IEEE 802.1w and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol, in the removal of single failure points to keep multi-vendor network equipment and connections running without interruptions in the U.S. Planning and training strategies for the implementation of the routing protocols, which may involve software upgrades and new routers and switches, are also discussed. INSET: SINGLE-VENDOR ADVANTAGES..

The article provides information on XORP open-source routing project, a start-up developing enterprise routers developed by Om Malik in the U.S. Malik believes that this start-up would undermine the routing sales of Cisco. While Networking Pipeline's Preston Gralla predicts that XORP could demise the vendors selling high margin networking hardware. Through this routing protocol, replacement of Cisco's Interior Gateway Routing Protocol would be possible. However, business enterprises would not replace the Cisco core router with XORP equivalent, since XORP's performance is slower than Cisco.