A cooperative configures its regional data center route with a primary next-hop toward its main transit provider and a qualified next-hop toward a secondary transit provider carrying a higher (less preferred) preference value. What common name describes this overall static routing design, where the backup path only becomes active if the primary disappears from the routing table?

A floating static route is the common term for a static route configured with a qualified next-hop whose preference is deliberately set higher (less preferred) than the primary path's preference, so it stays inactive in the routing table until the primary route is withdrawn. Once the primary disappears, Junos naturally promotes the floating route to active because it's now the best remaining candidate — no protocol adjacency or manual failover step is required. A default route describes a route's scope (0.0.0.0/0, matching any destination), which is an orthogonal concept — a default route can itself be built as a floating static route, but the terms describe different things. A rescue configuration is a saved, complete device configuration an administrator can roll back to during recovery; it has nothing to do with route selection between two next-hops. A routing instance is a separate logical routing table used to segregate traffic domains, not a technique for ranking backup paths within a single table. The exam-relevant nuance is that floating behavior comes entirely from the preference difference between the next-hops — remove that difference and both paths would be equally preferred instead of primary/backup. A concrete check is show route <prefix>, which shows the floating route as inactive while the primary is up, and active once the primary is gone.