A network engineering team is designing a lab network for a customer demonstration. The design engineer wants to show that the resiliency of the MPLS Traffic Engineering Fast Reroute solution has the

A next-hop (NHOP) backup tunnel terminates at the next router and only protects against link failures between the PLR and that router, providing no protection if the next-hop node itself fails.

'TE backup tunnel' is a generic descriptive term and not a specific MPLS TE FRR tunnel classification - the actual types are defined by where they terminate: next-hop (NHOP) or next-next-hop (NNHOP).

'FRR backup tunnel' is not a recognized MPLS TE tunnel type designation - it is informal shorthand that does not specify whether link-only or node-plus-link protection is provided.

A next-next-hop (NNHOP) backup tunnel terminates two hops away from the Point of Local Repair (PLR), bypassing both the link to the next router and the next router itself, which provides protection against both link and node failure scenarios. The PLR pre-signals and pre-builds this tunnel so that upon detecting a failure, traffic is immediately switched to the backup path without waiting for IGP reconvergence, achieving sub-50ms failover comparable to SONET/SDH protection switching. This makes NNHOP the correct tunnel type when the demonstration must cover both failure modes simultaneously.