Which router in the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) group is elected as the primary...

VRRP is a network-layer redundancy protocol that allows a group of physical routers to present themselves as a single virtual router with a shared virtual IP address, providing gateway-level fault tolerance to hosts on a network. Within a VRRP group, each participating router is assigned a configurable priority value, ranging from 1 to 254, and the router configured with the highest priority value is elected as the Master (primary) router, taking responsibility for forwarding traffic addressed to the virtual IP; all other group members remain in a Backup state, ready to assume the Master role automatically if the current Master fails or its priority effectively drops (such as through interface tracking). This priority-based election mechanism is the defining operational rule of VRRP and allows administrators to deliberately control which physical router should normally serve as the active gateway. 'The first router in the group' (A) is not a defined VRRP election criterion; there is no ordinal or join-order based selection rule in the protocol. 'Highest bandwidth link' (C) and 'most active connections' (D) are not VRRP election criteria at all; VRRP's election logic is based solely on the configured priority value (with router ID used only as a tiebreaker when priorities are equal). Highest priority is correct.

Reference topic: Fault Tolerance Techniques - Network Gateway Redundancy (VRRP).