In order to allow coordinated connection establishment and prevent standby routers from attempting to establish connections, connections from a router are only established when this router:
- is the master or
- it is in backup mode and its main connection is configured with a keep alive or
- it has completely logged off and the timer for the renewed connection attempt (reconnect delay) expires
This simple rule allows the main connection to be configured as a keep alive connection even in standby routers. It also makes it possible only to use connections with hold time even in the main router.
Connections are always established when all virtual routers connected to the remote site have switched to standby mode. This either happens because another router propagates a higher priority or a LAN connection is lost.