After a parks distribution switch reboots, staff want the higher-priority HSRP router to reclaim active forwarding without waiting for the current active to fail. Which concept enables that behavior?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Preempt is the polite but firm “I’m back, and I outrank you—hand me the radio.” Without it, the lower-priority box that grabbed active during the reboot keeps driving even after the preferred gateway returns.
Full Explanation
After a parks distribution switch reboots, staff want the higher-priority HSRP router to reclaim active forwarding without waiting for the current active to fail. HSRP preempt enables that behavior: a higher-priority standby that becomes eligible can take over the active role rather than remaining standby while a lower-priority router continues forwarding. In a municipal parks design, preempt is how the preferred distribution node resumes active gateway duty after recovery instead of leaving traffic pinned to a backup that happened to win during the outage.
IGMP immediate-leave on the parks access VLAN fails by concept because immediate-leave optimizes multicast leave latency on a segment; it does not control HSRP active reclamation. Static NAT overload with a reusable public PAT pool fails because NAT overload addresses many-to-one translation, not first-hop active/standby role changes. VRRP object tracking that disables all OSPF passive interfaces fails because that mixes VRRP tracking with OSPF passive-interface behavior and does not describe HSRP preempt reclaiming active forwarding after a preferred router returns.
Exam caveat: HSRP without preempt often leaves the current active in place even when a higher-priority peer recovers—knowing that default behavior is a frequent ENCOR trap. Preempt is separate from priority; priority ranks preference, preempt allows the preferred peer to act on that ranking when it is eligible. Do not confuse multicast leave timers or NAT pools with FHRP role control.
Operational check: confirm standby preempt is configured on the preferred parks HSRP group, verify priorities with show standby, reload or recover the preferred node in a change window, and observe it reclaim Active while endpoints keep the same virtual gateway.