CHAPTER
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5-1
Cisco Nexus 7000 Series NX-OS Interfaces Configuration Guide, Release 5.x
OL-23435-03
5
Configuring Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
This chapter describes how to configure Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) on Cisco NX-OS
devices.
This chapter includes the following sections:
• Information About BFD, page 5-1
• Licensing Requirements for BFD, page 5-4
• Prerequisites for BFD, page 5-4
• Guidelines and Limitations, page 5-5
• Default Settings, page 5-6
• Configuring BFD, page 5-6
• Verifying the BFD Configuration, page 5-25
• Monitoring BFD, page 5-25
• Configuration Examples for BFD, page 5-26
• Additional References, page 5-26
• Feature History for BFD, page 5-27
Information About BFD
BFD is a detection protocol designed to provide fast forwarding-path failure detection times for media
types, encapsulations, topologies, and routing protocols. You can use BFD to detect forwarding path
failures at a uniform rate, rather than the variable rates for different protocol hello mechanisms. BFD
makes network profiling and planning easier and reconvergence time consistent and predictable.
BFD provides subsecond failure detection between two adjacent devices and can be less CPU-intensive
than protocol hello messages because some of the BFD load can be distributed onto the data plane on
supported modules.
This section includes the following topics:
• Asynchronous Mode, page 5-2
• BFD Detection of Failures, page 5-2
• Distributed Operation, page 5-3
• BFD Echo Function, page 5-3
• Security, page 5-4