VRRPv3 specifies an election protocol that dynamically assigns responsibility for a virtual router to one of the VRRPv3 routers on a LAN. The VRRPv3 router controlling the IP address(es) associated with a virtual router is called the Master, and forwards packets transmitted to these IP addresses. The election process provides dynamic fail over in the forwarding responsibility should the Master become unavailable. This allows any of the virtual router IP addresses on the LAN to be used as the default first hop router by end-hosts. The advantage gained from using VRRPv3 is a higher availability default path without requiring configuration of dynamic routing or router discovery protocols on every end-host.