The BFD - Static Route Support feature enables association of static routes with a static Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) configuration in order to monitor static route reachability using the configured BFD session. Depending on status of the BFD session, static routes are added to or removed from the Routing Information Base (RIB).

Unlike dynamic routing protocols, such as OSPF and BGP, static routing has no method of peer discovery. Therefore, when BFD is configured, the reachability of the gateway is completely dependent on the state of the BFD session to the specified neighbor. Unless the BFD session is up, the gateway for the static route is considered unreachable, and therefore the affected routes will not be installed in the appropriate RIB.

For a BFD session to be successfully established, BFD must be configured on the interface on the peer and there must be a BFD client registered on the peer for the address of the BFD neighbor. When an interface is used by dynamic routing protocols, the latter requirement is usually met by configuring the routing protocol instances on each neighbor for BFD. When an interface is used exclusively for static routing, this requirement must be met by configuring static routes on the peers.

If a BFD configuration is removed from the remote peer while the BFD session is in the up state, the updated state of the BFD session is not signaled to IPv4 static. This will cause the static route to remain in the RIB. The only workaround is to remove the IPv4 static BFD neighbor configuration so that the static route no longer tracks BFD session state. Also, if you change the encapsulation type on a serial interface to one that is unsupported by BFD, BFD will be in a down state on that interface. The workaround is to shut down the interface, change to a supported encapsulation type, and then reconfigure BFD.

A single BFD session can be used by an IPv4 static client to track the reachability of next hops through a specific interface. You can assign a BFD group for a set of BFD-tracked static routes. Each group must have one active static BFD configuration, one or more passive BFD configurations, and the corresponding static routes to be BFD-tracked. Nongroup entries are BFD-tracked static routes for which a BFD group is not assigned. A BFD group must accommodate static BFD configurations that can be part of different VRFs. Effectively, the passive static BFD configurations need not be in the same VRF as that of the active configuration.

For each BFD group, there can be only one active static BFD session. You can configure the active BFD session by adding a static BFD configuration and a corresponding static route that uses the BFD configuration. The BFD session in a group is created only when there is an active static BFD configuration and the static route that uses the static BFD configuration. When the active static BFD configuration or the active static route is removed from a BFD group, all the passive static routes are withdrawn from the RIB. Effectively, all the passive static routes are inactive until an active static BFD configuration and a static route to be tracked by the active BFD session are configured in the group.

Similarly, for each BFD group, there can be one or more passive static BFD configurations and their corresponding static routes to be BFD-tracked. Passive static session routes take effect only when the active BFD session state is reachable. Though the active BFD session state of the group is reachable, the passive static route is added to the RIB only if the corresponding interface state is up. When a passive BFD session is removed from a group, it will not affect the active BFD session if one existed, or the BFD group reachability status.