BFD Overview
Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) provides low-overhead, short-duration detection of failures in the path between adjacent routers. BFD allows a single mechanism to be used for failure detection over any media and at any protocol layer, with a wide range of detection times and overhead. The fast detection of failures provides immediate reaction to failure in the event of a failed link or neighbor.
![]() Tip |
You can programmatically configure BFD and retrieve operational data using |
Features Unsupported
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BFD echo mode and encryption are not supported.
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BFD over MPLS tunnel interfaces is not supported.
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Dampening extensions for BFD are not supported.
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BFD down dampening is not supported.
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BFD IPv6 Dampening is not supported.
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SNMP traps are not supported for multipath BFD sessions.
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BFD Over GRE is not supported.
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BFD over PWHE is not supported.
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Seamless BFD is not supported.
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BFD over Satellite interface is not supported.
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BFD Authentication is not supported.
Supported Functionalities
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BFD hardware offload is supported for both IPv4 and IPv6.
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BFD is only supported in IP core. It cannot coexist with Label distribution Protocol, or Segment Routing, or Traffic Engineering in the core.
BFD is only supported in IP core. It cannot coexist with Label distribution Protocol, or Segment Routing, or Traffic Engineering in the core. This is applicable for releases prior to IOS XR Release 7.1.1.
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BFD over Bundle (BoB) over IPv6 is not supported with dyamically configured link-local address. It must be statically configured.
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BFD over IRB interface is not supported.
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Egress IPv4 ACLs block all traffic, including router-generated traffic for the following routers and line cards:
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NC57-24DD
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NC57-18DD-SE
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NC57-36H-SE
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NC57-36H6D-S
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NC57-MOD-S
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NCS-57B1-6D24-SYS
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NCS-57B1-5DSE-SYS
For all other routers and line cards, egress IPv4 ACLs do not block certain router-generated traffic, such as ICMP messages.
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BFD Packet Injection
BFD enables egress packet processing injection which results in egress feature processing and ACL processing. The manner in which the egress ACL processes the locally generated BFD packets is different from how the routing protocol processes them. Routing protocols use TX inject to inject packets from the IOS-XR software stack where most locally-generated packets are not subject to egress ACL.
The router injects the source IP address 0.0.0.0 with tunnel encapsulation. The BFD programmable editor overwrites the source IP address with the actual IP address using tunnel encapsulation in the egress transmit packet processor (ETPP). However, as this occurs after the egress IPv4 ACL processing, the egress ACL processing is aware of the SRC IP address of 0.0.0.0. This could result in unexpected matches. A bearing condition monitoring (BCM) limitation causes the aforesaid unexpected mismatches because operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning (OAMP) supports only 16 different SRC IP addresses. To overcome this limitation, you need to permit BFD packets specifically.
To know more about protecting locally originated BFD packets, see Protecting Locally Originated BFD Packets.
Feature Limitations
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Egress ACL with drop rule for src-ip equal to 0.0.0.0 will drop BFD-V4 Tx packets on that interface. This is because, BFD-V4 packets generated by OAMP will have src.ip 0.0.0.0 due to its limitation. And the actual source IP value is filled in ETPP block in pipeline before sending the packet. Since egress ACL is applied before ETPP, the BFD packets are dropped.
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BFD over bundle feature is supported only in IETF mode.
BFD Timers
![]() Note |
If the timer is configured below the minimum timer supported, some undesirable behavior can be seen in BFD. customers some time will configure 3 msec as timer and will miss the minimum timer of 4 msec. |
Type of BFD Session |
Minimum Timer Supported |
Minimum Multipliers Value |
Supported Minimum-Interval Value (Up to 6 Unique Timers Profiles) |
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Single Hop |
4ms |
3 |
Any |
BFD over Bundle Members (BoB) |
4ms |
3 |
Any |
BFD over Logical bundle (BLB) |
100ms (starting Release 24.3.1) 300ms (prior to Release 24.3.1) |
3 |
Any |
BGP Multi Hop |
50ms |
3 |
Any |
BFD Over BVI |
50ms |
3 |
Any |
Type of BFD Session |
Minimum Timer Supported |
Minimum Multipliers Value |
Supported Timer Profile (Up to 6 unique timer profiles) |
Maximum Scale depending on Minimum Interval |
---|---|---|---|---|
Single Hop |
4ms |
3 |
Any |
150 (with 8ms and above, all 256 sessions are configurable) |
BFD over Bundle Members (BoB) |
4ms |
3 |
Any |
150ms (with 8ms and above, all 256 sessions are configurable) |
BFD over Logical bundle (BLB) |
100ms (starting Release 24.3.1) 300ms (prior to Release 24.3.1) |
3 |
Any |
256 |
BGP Multi Hop |
50ms |
3 |
Any |
256 |
BFD Over BVI |
50ms |
3 |
Any |
250 or Max MP scale- whichever is lower |