A redundancy protection scheme comprises sending a protection packet from the primary network interface to the secondary network interface, the protection packet having a hardware address of the primary network interface as a source address and a hardware address of the secondary network interface as a destination address. The scheme further comprises determining whether the secondary network interface receives the protection packet from the primary network interface, operating the primary and secondary network interface as active and standby network interface in response to the secondary network interface receiving the protection packet, or operating both the primary and secondary network interface as active network interface in response to the secondary network interface not receiving the protection packet, and providing the hardware address of the active secondary network interface to devices coupled thereto.
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