Not everyone knows that HSRP, a fault-tolerant default gateway protocol, has two versions: version 1 (the default) and version two. The second version was integrated from IOS Release 12.2(25)S. HSRP Version 2 features: It advertises and learns millisecond timer values. This change ensures stability of the HSRP groups in all cases. It expands the group number range from 0 to 4095 and consequently uses a new MAC address range 0000.0C9F.F000 to 0000.0C9F.FFFF. It provides improved management and troubleshooting: the HSRP version 2 packet format includes a 6-byte identifier field that is used to uniquely identify the sender of the message. Typically, this field [...]

As you see in the article “Implementing High Availability with HSRP“, it is quite simple configure Hot Standby Router Protocol. Some cases require a custom configuration, using priority, track, preempt etc…and these are: The standby preempt interface configuration command allows the router to become the active router when its priority is higher than all other HSRP-configured routers in this Hot Standby group. The configurations of both routers include this command so that each router can be the standby router for the other router. If you do not use the standby preempt command in the configuration for a router, that router [...]

The Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) is a Cisco proprietary first-hop redundancy protocol (FHRP) designed to allow for transparent fail-over of the first-hop IP router, and has been described in detail in RFC 2281. HSRP provides high network availability by providing first-hop routing redundancy for IP hosts on Ethernet, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Bridge-Group Virtual Interface (BVI), LAN Emulation (LANE), or Token Ring networks configured with a default gateway IP address. HSRP is used in a group of routers for selecting an active router and a standby router. In a group of router interfaces, the active router is the [...]