Microloops are brief packet loops that occur in the network following a topology change (link down, link up, or metric change events). Microloops are caused by the non-simultaneous convergence of different nodes in the network. If nodes converge and send traffic to a neighbor node that has not converged yet, traffic may be looped between these two nodes, resulting in packet loss, jitter, and out-of-order packets.

The Segment Routing Microloop Avoidance feature detects if microloops are possible following a topology change. If a node computes that a microloop could occur on the new topology, the node creates a loop-free SR-TE policy path to the destination using a list of segments. After the RIB update delay timer expires, the SR-TE policy is replaced with regular forwarding paths.

For IS-IS, Segment Routing Microloop Avoidance is not supported when incremental shortest path first (ISPF) is configured.