first of all, sorry for the duplicate message. i originally sent it without my proper from address to avoid having my primary mailbox spammed, but thought it wouldnt go through because the from address wasnt on nanog-post... second, i incorrectly referred to the rfc for IRDP as 1285, when it is 1256. re: IRDP support. the following os's/routing daemons have support: gated (version ?) Solaris (in.rdisc(1)) Windows NT (with sp3) Windows 95 (with Sockets 2) a couple of useful urls were sent my way, the most interesting being: http://www.eddieware.org which details an Open Source HA project by Ericsson (very cool), which is unfortunately only supported under Linux for the time being, though Solaris/FreeBSD support is slated for December. another from a usenix/lisa presentation with some good info is here: http://dilbert.dcs.it.mtu.edu/failover/ also, many suggestions were given for ways to accomplish this goal with network layer stuff (ospf, rip, interface aliases, proxy arp, etc.), though i was looking for an application layer solution, primarily. if you'd like details on the various suggestions, email me privately. -foo