Customer Success - Guided resource

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN: Getting started guide

This guide walks you through the core steps required to get your network up and running, from initial onboarding to operational best practices.

  • Networking
  • Catalyst SD-WAN
  • Guide

Overlay verification and routing resilience

Confirm Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) session health and sub-second failover across transport tunnels

Confirm that Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) sessions are active and stable across all transport tunnels (MPLS, Internet), verifying continuous link health monitoring, path quality, and sub-second failover capabilities.

Content summarized by AI

To help you get started with your task, content across Cisco recommended sources has been summarized by AI

Information:  Summary is generated by AI and may not be validated by a subject matter expert.  Before using results, verify accuracy and completeness via the sources links below.

Summarized on September 30, 2026

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) is a protocol that provides rapid detection of link, device, and path failures in enterprise networks, helping ensure faster recovery and high availability for critical applications [1]. In Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, BFD operates across overlay tunnels (such as MPLS and Internet transports) and can also be enabled for traditional routing protocols including BGP, OSPF, OSPFv3, and EIGRP.

To confirm BFD session health, you can monitor sessions and verify configuration status using operational commands that check expected behavior and stability. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN also automatically suspends unstable BFD sessions to prevent repeated flapping and reduce unnecessary traffic disruption, which helps maintain overall network stability.

For reliable BFD operation in transport VPNs, correct next-hop resolution is essential, as static route configuration directly impacts BFD session establishment. BFD can be configured using configuration groups, and common issues can be troubleshot using dedicated troubleshooting guidance to ensure sessions remain active and sub-second failover capabilities are functioning as expected.

Sources

  1. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Routing Configuration Guide, Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN Release 17.x - Bi-directional Forwarding Detection Protocol [Cisco SD-WAN]
Copy
Helpful
Unhelpful
Previous