Cisco Cisco IOS Software Release 12.2(33)SRE

© 2006, 2007 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) is a detection protocol that is designed to provide fast 
forwarding path failure detection times for all media types, encapsulations, topologies, and routing 
protocols. In addition to fast forwarding path failure detection, BFD provides a consistent failure 
detection method for network administrators. Because the network administrator can use BFD to detect 
forwarding path failures at a uniform rate, rather than the variable rates for different routing protocol 
hello mechanisms, network profiling and planning is easier, and reconvergence time is consistent and 
predictable. The main benefit of implementing BFD for BGP is a significantly faster reconvergence time.

Configuration information is included in the “Configuring Advanced BGP Features” module of the 
Cisco IOS BGP Configuration Guide, Release 12.4T, at the following URL:

The following sections provide information about this feature:

BFD for BGP

Decreasing BGP Convergence Time Using BFD

Configuring BFD on a BGP Network: Example 

For a complete list of features included in the “Configuring Advanced BGP Features” module, see the 
Feature Information table located toward the end of the module.

The following commands are new or modified for this feature:

neighbor fall-over bfd