BFD Operation

The operation of BFD over a LDP interface tracks the next-hop of prefix IPv4 and prefix IPv6 in addition to tracking of the LDP peer address of the Hello adjacency over that link. This tracking is required as LDP can now resolve both IPv4 and IPv6 prefix FECs over a single IPv4 or IPv6 LDP session and therefore the next-hop of a prefix does not necessarily match the LDP peer source address of the Hello adjacency. The failure of either or both of the BFD session tracking the FEC next-hop and the one tracking the Hello adjacency causes the LFA backup NHLFE for the FEC to be activated, or the FEC to be re-resolved if there is no FRR backup.

The following CLI command allows the user to decide if they want to track only with an IPv4 BFD session, only with an IPv6 BFD session, or both:

config>router>ldp>if-params>if>bfd-enable [ipv4] [ipv6]

This command provides the flexibility required in case the user does not need to track both Hello adjacency and next-hops of FECs. For example, if the user configures bfd-enable ipv6 only to save on the number of BFD sessions, then LDP tracks the IPv6 Hello adjacency and the next-hops of IPv6 prefix FECs. LDP does not track next-hops of IPv4 prefix FECs resolved over the same LDP IPv6 adjacency. If the IPv4 data plane encounters errors and the IPv6 Hello adjacency is not affected and remains up, traffic for the IPv4 prefix FECs resolved over that IPv6 adjacency is black-holed. If the BFD tracking the IPv6 Hello adjacency times out, then all IPv4 and IPv6 prefix FECs is updated.

The tracking of a mLDP FEC has the following behavior: