Routing Configuration Guide, Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Releases 17.x

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Configure BFD using a configuration group

Updated: February 6, 2026

Overview

Describes how to configure BFD using configuration groups.

Before you begin

On the Configuration > Configuration Groups page, choose SD-WAN as the solution type.

Procedure

1.

From the Cisco SD-WAN Manager menu, choose Configuration > Configuration Groups

2.

Create and configure a BFD feature in a System profile.

  1. Configure basic settings.

    Table 1. Basic Configuration

    Field

    Description

    Poll Interval(In Millisecond)

    Specify how often BFD polls all data plane tunnels on a router to collect packet latency, loss, and other statistics used by application-aware routing.

    Range: 1 through 4,294,967,296 (232 – 1) milliseconds

    Default: 600,000 milliseconds (10 minutes)

    Multiplier

    Specify the value by which to multiply the poll interval, to set how often application-aware routing acts on the data plane tunnel statistics to figure out the loss and latency and to calculate new tunnels if the loss and latency times do not meet the configured SLAs.

    Range: 1 through 6

    Default: 6

    DSCP Values for BFD Packets(decimal)

    Specify the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) value of the BFD packets that is used in the DSCP control traffic.

    Range: 0-63

    Default: 48

  2. Configure colors.

    Table 2. Color

    Field

    Description

    Add Color

    Color*

    Choose the color of the transport tunnel for data traffic moving between the devices. The color identifies a specific WAN transport provider.

    Values: 3g, biz-internet, blue, bronze, custom1, custom2, custom3, default, gold, green, lte, metro-ethernet, mpls, private1 through private6, public-internet, red, silver

    Default: default

    Hello Interval (milliseconds)*

    Specify how often BFD sends Hello packets on the transport tunnel. BFD uses these packets to detect the liveness of the tunnel connection and to detect faults on the tunnel.

    Range: 100 through 300000 milliseconds

    Default: 1000 milliseconds (1 second)

    Multiplier*

    Specify how many Hello packet intervals BFD waits before declaring that a tunnel has failed. BFD declares that the tunnel has failed when, during all these intervals, BFD has received no Hello packets on the tunnel. This interval is a multiplier of the Hello packet interval time.

    Range: 1 through 60

    Default: 7

    Path MTU Discovery*

    Enable or disable path MTU discovery for the transport tunnel. When path MTU discovery is enabled, the path MTU for the tunnel connection is checked periodically, about once per minute, and it is updated dynamically. When path MTU discovery is disabled, the expected tunnel MTU is 1472 bytes, but the effective tunnel MTU is 1468 bytes.

    Default: Enabled

    Default DSCP value for BFD packets*

    Specify the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) value of the BFD packets that is used in the DSCP control traffic.

    Range: 0-63

    Default: 48

The show sdwan bfd session output displays BFD parameters based on the negotiation to choose greater value of hello interval and multiplier combined. The calculation of multiplier is changed from the show output per the negotiation result.

What to do next

Also see Deploy a configuration group.