In one embodiment, a networking switch includes an interswitch link (ISL) interface configured to communicate with a second networking switch via an ISL and a networking port configured to connect to an access switch in Layer-2 (L2) via a virtual link aggregation (vLAG) with the second networking switch. The networking switch includes a virtual router redundancy protocol (VRRP) module configured to perform active interact protocol (IP) forwarding. Moreover, the VRRP module is configured to indicate a status of the networking switch to the second networking switch via the ISL. The status is one of: initialization when the networking switch is not currently active (INIT), back-up status when the networking switch is acting as a back-up switch (BACK-UP), or master status when the networking switch is acting as a master switch (MASTER). In addition, the networking switch is positioned at a boundary between L2 and Layer-3 (L3).