Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Troubleshooting Guide

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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Troubleshooting Guide

Troubleshoot BFD tunnel issues

Updated: September 28, 2026

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Configure BFD troubleshooting through Cisco SD-WAN Manager to identify and resolve tunnel connectivity issues using automated debugging workflows.

The BFD tunnel troubleshooting feature provides a user-friendly workflow for identifying and resolving issues. The integration of detailed forensic data and automated debugging steps helps streamline the troubleshooting process, making it more accessible and efficient for network administrators.

Minimum release: Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN Release 17.18.1a and Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager Release 20.18.1

From Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN Release 17.18.1a, the Tunnel Troubleshooting pane is available on the Monitor > Devices > Tunnel page in Cisco SD-WAN Manager.

A functioning BFD session involves various elements like, TLOC, BFD-session, SDWAN-session, IPsec-session, and NAT under the hood functioning and programmed correctly across the layers. When you enable BFD logging for all the existing BFD sessions, the relevant logs for a BFD helps in troubleshooting.

Cisco SD-WAN Manager provides a method to logically group the BFD down sessions so that you can make logical analysis and launch BFD troubleshoot.

Procedure

  1. From the Cisco SD-WAN Manager menu, choose Monitor > Devices.

  2. Choose a device from the list of devices that is displayed.

  3. Click Troubleshooting in the left pane.

  4. In the Connectivity area, click Tunnel Troubleshooting.

    The Tunnel Troubleshooting window opens.

  5. Choose the device from the Select Device drop-down box.

    You can search for a device from the Search field.

  6. Choose the local circuit from the Select local circuit drop-down box.

  7. Choose the remote device from the Select remote device and Select remote circuit drop-down box.

  8. Choose the encapsulation details from the Encapsulation drop-down box.

  9. Click Go.

    You can check the Progress and Conclusions pane for details on BFD sessions.

    Progress examples:

    • Collecting troubleshoot data from a local device.

    • Checking BFD session, Tunnel, SDWAN session, resource allocation and anomalies from device.

    • Collecting troubleshoot data from a remote device.

    • Processing troubleshoot data collected from local and remote device.

    • Verifying BFD session setup, state machine, echo packets, tunnel setup, SDWAN session setup, underlay setup, symnat for BFD session

    Conclusion examples:

    • Machine reasoning has completed

    • Local Device : Local TLOC is created

    • Local Device : Remote TLOC is created

    • Local Device : IPSec session is created

    • Local Device : BFD session is created

    • Local Device : SDWAN session is created

    • Local Device : BFD discriminator is allocated

    • Local Device : IPSec flow ID is allocated

    • Local Device : Adjacency is resolved

    • Local Device : BFD state is Up

    • Remote Device : Local TLOC is created

    • Collecting troubleshoot data from a local device.

The BFD tunnel troubleshooting process completes and displays progress updates and conclusions about the BFD session status, helping you identify and resolve tunnel connectivity issues.