REDES DE DATOS II

Network Convergence & BFD Protocol

Alberto Arellano A. Ing. Msc.

aarellano@espoch.edu.ec
CCNA – CCNP – CCSP – LPI - JNCIA
Network Convergence Overview
 Network convergence is the time needed for traffic to be rerouted
to the alternative or more optimal path after the network event.

 Network convergence requires all affected routers to process the

event and update the appropriate data structures used for
forwarding

 Network convergence is the time required to:

• Detect the event → T1
• Propagate the event → T2
• Process the event → T3
• Update the routing table/FIB → T4
Need for Fast Convergence
 Its not only browsing, mail and watching videos any more.
 Today, Internet and Networks carrying Voice/Video calls,
telepresence systems.
 Carrying business and misión critical data.
 No option for outage or interruption.
 Few years before in Ethernet network Convergence time
was about 2 minutes.
 At present it takes few seconds without any fast
convergence techniques applied in Interface and protocol
configuration.
 But many critical services demand < 50ms
convergence time in a carrier grade network.
Need for Fast Convergence
Network Convergence Time
Routing Protocol Convergence Comparison using Simulation and Real
Equipment. D. Sankar and D. Lancaster.
Centre for Security, Communications and Network Research Plymouth University,
United Kingdom. 2013
Network Convergence Time
Failure Detection
 Detecting the failure is one of the most critical and often one
of the most challenging part of network convergence.

 Failure Detection can occur on different levels/layers

LAYER TECHNIQUE

Physical • G.709 (IPoDWDM)

• SONET/SDH (POS)
• Ethernet autonegotiation Transport
Data Link • PPP or HDLC keepalives
• Frame-Relay LMI,
• ATM-OAM
• Ethernet-OAM
Network IGP Hello, BFD
IGP Fast Convergence
Link Failure Detection
• Fast Down Detection (Fast Hellos)
• Enable BFD to notify routing protocols about the link failure in
sub second interval.
• In Ethernet interface, ISIS/OSPF will attempt to elect a DIS/DR
when it forms an adjacency – As it is running as a point-to-
point link, configuring ISIS/ OSPF to operate in "point-to-point
mode” reduces link failure detection time.

int gi0/0/1
isis network point-to-point

int gi0/0/1
ip ospf network point-to-point
Fast Down Detection(Fast Hellos)
 OSPF Default timers

 OSPF supports aggressive timers to decrease link

failure detection
• Timers can be tuned to a minimum of 1 second dead interval
• Number of Hello packets per seconds specified as multiplier – 3 to 20
• Interface dampening is recommended with sub-second hello timers
• OSPF point-to-point network type to avoid designated router (DR)
negotiation
Fast Hellos IGPs
Bidirectional Forwarding Detection - BFD
 RFC 5880 – Juniper Networks – June 2010
 Lightweight hello protocol designed to run over multiple transport
protocols
 Designed for sub-second Layer 3 failure detection
 Any interested client
• EIGRP
• IS-IS
• OSPF
• Static Routes
 All registered clients benefit from uniform failure detection
 Runs on physical, virtual and bundle interfaces
 Uses UDP port 3784 → echo Packets / 3785 → control Packets
 BFD packets are small (12/24 bytes on top of the UDP+IP
header)
 BFD can provide reaction time close to 50 milliseconds
BFD three-way handshake
The BFD state machine implements a three-way handshake,
both when establishing a BFD session and when tearing it
down for any reason, to ensure that both systems are aware of
the state change.
BFD Router Architecture
BFD Operation Mode – Async Mode
In Asyncronous Mode, two end node send BFD Control
Packets each other periodically. If they do not get some of the
Control Packets, they decide that there is failure. In Async
Mode, BFD control packets flow in each direction
BFD Operation Mode – Demand Mode
In Demand Mode, two end nodes send BFD Control Packets
only for a short time to detect if are there any failure or not. In
Demand Mode, BFD control packets flow in each direction.
BFD Operation Mode – Echo Mode
In Echo Mode, BFD Echo Packets also used between two
end beside BFD Control packets. Echo packets is used to
test forwarding plane not host stack.
BFD Protocol
When BFD doesn’t receive its control packets
anymore it realizes we have a link failure and it will
report this to OSPF. OSPF will then tear down the
neighbor adjacency.
 BFD Configuration - CISCO
BFD timers are configured under each interface with the
command:
bfd interval [send-timer] min_rx [receive-timer] multiplier [number]

• The send-timer specifies the frequency of BFD packets

originated by the router
• The receive-timer the minimum interval between packets
accepted from BFD peers.
• The multiplier number is the number of BFD packets that can
be lost before the BFD peer is declared down
BFD Configuration - CISCO

7604(config)#interface TenGigabitEthernet 4/0/1

7604(config-if)#bfd interval 50 min_rx 50
multiplier 3
7604(config-if)#ip ospf bfd

7604(config)#router ospf 100

7604(config-router)#network 1.1.1.1 0.0.0.0 area 0
7604(config-router)#exit

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:ASR9K(config)#router ospf 100

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:ASR9K(config-ospf)#bfd minimum-interval 50
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:ASR9K(config-ospf)#bfd multiplier 3
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:ASR9K(config-ospf)#area 0
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:ASR9K(config-ospf-ar)#interface TenGigE 0/0/0/0
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:ASR9K(config-ospf-ar-if)#bfd fast-detect
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:ASR9K(config-ospf-ar-if)#commit
 BFD Configuration – Juniper - HPE

set protocols ospf area 0.0.0.0 interface em0

bfd-liveness-detection minimum-interval 100
set protocols ospf area 0.0.0.0 interface em0
bfd-liveness-detection multiplier 3

[RouterA] interface GigabitEthernet 2/1/1

[RouterA-GigabitEthernet2/1/1] ospf bfd enable
[RouterA-GigabitEthernet2/1/1] bfd min-transmit-interval 500
[RouterA-GigabitEthernet2/1/1] bfd min-receive-interval 500
[RouterA-GigabitEthernet2/1/1] bfd detect-multiplier 7
[RouterA-GigabitEthernet2/1/1] return
Lab. OSPF with BFD
In this scenario, R1, R2 and R3 are all part of OSPF. We will simulate a
failure caused by CARRIER in which the interface on R1 will not go
down, hence OSPF will need to wait for the dead timer interval to
expire, which is 40 seconds by default, so it can switch over the
alternate path through R3.
OSPF without BFD
OSPF without BFD – Fail Cloud Provider
OSPF without BFD – Fail Cloud Provider

20 segundos
OSPF with BFD – Config
OSPF with BFD – Fail Cloud Provider
OSPF with BFD – Fail Cloud Provider