Bidirectional Forwarding

In Fireware v12.9 or higher, you can use a simplified implementation of bidirectional forwarding (BFD) for dynamic routing. BFD is a network protocol used to detect faults between two routers or switches connected by a link.

To implement BFD on your Firebox:

  1. Add a new firewall policy.
  2. In the policy, specify the BFD protocols (UDP 3784 and 4784).
  3. In the From list, specify the interface that receives OSPF or BGP messages from neighbors.
  4. In the To list, specify the Firebox.

Next, enable BFD in either OSPF or BGP. For OSPF, enable BFD in the interface context:

interface vlan20
ip ospf bfd
exit

For BGP, append the BFD keyword in the neighbor command line:

router bgp 26
bgp router-id 169.254.1.26
neighbor 169.254.1.53 remote-as 53
neighbor 169.254.1.53 bfd
!
address-family ipv4 unicast
redistribute static
exit-address-family
exit

You cannot configure any additional parameters for BFD, such as the peer address or timer and interval parameters.

Related Topics

About Dynamic Routing

About Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)

About Open Shortest Path First (OSPF and OSPFv3) Protocol