diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index b8f6940fbbc..2a2a3ecdada 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -226,6 +226,9 @@ Trunk (unreleased changes)
     HADOOP-6717. Log levels in o.a.h.security.Groups too high 
     (Todd Lipcon via jghoman)
 
+    HADOOP-6667. RPC.waitForProxy should retry through NoRouteToHostException.
+    (Todd Lipcon via tomwhite)
+
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
     HADOOP-6467. Improve the performance on HarFileSystem.listStatus(..).
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/ipc/RPC.java b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/ipc/RPC.java
index 36874c511dc..08f11de3f71 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/ipc/RPC.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/ipc/RPC.java
@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@ import java.lang.reflect.Method;
 
 import java.net.ConnectException;
 import java.net.InetSocketAddress;
+import java.net.NoRouteToHostException;
 import java.net.SocketTimeoutException;
 import java.io.*;
 import java.util.Map;
@@ -186,6 +187,9 @@ public class RPC {
       } catch(SocketTimeoutException te) {  // namenode is busy
         LOG.info("Problem connecting to server: " + addr);
         ioe = te;
+      } catch(NoRouteToHostException nrthe) { // perhaps a VIP is failing over
+        LOG.info("No route to host for server: " + addr);
+        ioe = nrthe;
       }
       // check if timed out
       if (System.currentTimeMillis()-timeout >= startTime) {