Which First Hop Redundancy Protocol (FHRP) is capable of load balancing among multiple routers within the same subnet?

GLBP, or Gateway Load Balancing Protocol, is designed specifically to enable load balancing among multiple routers that are configured as default gateways for hosts within the same subnet. Unlike other First Hop Redundancy Protocols, GLBP allows multiple active routers to share the traffic load, efficiently distributing the networking workload among all participating routers.

When a device sends traffic to the gateway, GLBP assigns one of the routers as the active virtual gateway and distributes requests to the various routers, ensuring that all available resources are utilized. This is particularly useful for improving network performance and reducing the risk of any one router becoming a bottleneck.

In contrast, HSRP (Hot Standby Router Protocol) and VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) only provide failover capabilities and do not support load balancing among multiple routers. These protocols ensure that there is a backup router available if the primary one fails, but they do not enable simultaneous traffic handling by multiple routers.