BFD

Overview

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) is a communication error detection protocol. BFD can provide failure detection on any kind of bidirectional path or link between systems, including physical links, virtual circuits, LAGs, and MPLS LSPs. When BFD is in use, switches periodically exchange BFD Hello packets over each path between them. If a switch stops receiving BFD Hello packets after a configured interval, the neighboring switch, or the path hop, is assumed to have failed.

BFD global configuration is performed in the NE properties.

BFD sessions are enabled at the path or interface level, for example, in the properties of an LSP.

Seamless BFD

Seamless BFD (SBFD) offers a streamlined version of BFD. An SBFD module allocates SBFD session discriminators to local entities and distributes them to remote entities. The advertised discriminator information allows remote entities to more quickly initiate and perform BFD connectivity testing.