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FreeBFD

This is an implementation of the BFD (Bidirectional Forwarding Detection) protocol.

BFD is defined in RFC5880.

It consists of two processes:

bfd
Runs just a single BFD session using parameters specified on the command line.
bfdd
Can support multiple BFD sessions that are specified either statically in a config file or dynamically via a monitor socket; a library is provided for communicating with bfdd over the monitor socket to create sessions and receive session state change notifications.

Status

The implemenation is still quite immature. It is able to bring up and maintain a session with a Cisco router (and with another FreeBFD host), but it has not been tested thoroughly. Also, many of the design ideas are still being implemented (and documented).

Dependencies

libconfig (http://www.hyperrealm.com/libconfig/):

$ apt-get install libconfig-dev

json-c (https://github.com/json-c/json-c/wiki):

$ apt-get install libjson-c-dev

Session Monitoring

Sessions can be monitored by external applications via TCP connections to the monitor port (defaults to 5643) of the bfdd appication.

A monitor application connects to the monitor TCP server port and issues session subscription commands to the bfdd daemon process. Once subscribed, the bfdd daemon will send notifications to the monitor application on session state transitions.

Multiple monitor applications can be connected to the bfdd daemon simultaneously. Each monitor can subscribe to notifications for a specific session or for all sessions.

Communication over the TCP connection consists of JSON encoded data packets.

Subscribing to notificaions for a session will cause a session to be created if it doesn't exists. Subscribing to notifications for a session which already exists is perfectly acceptible.

Unsubscribing from notifications will cause a session to be destroyed if the number of subscriptions to the session drops to zero.

Questions & Concerns

  • Does it make sense to destory sessions if there are no subscriptions? How would that work in the data center if nothing is subscribed to dynamically created sessions?

Monitor Commands

These are sent from the monitor application to the bfdd daemon.

  • Subscribe to session(s):

    {
    "MsgType" : "Subscribe",
    "SessionID" : {
        "PeerAddr" : "<ip-addr>",
        "LocalAddr" : "<ip-addr>",
        "PeerPort" : <int>,   // Optional: Defaults to 3784
        "LocalPort" : <int>,  // Optional: Defaults to 3784
    },
    // The following are optional.
    "SessionOpts" : {
        "DemandMode" : "on|off",
        "DetectMult" : <int>,
        "AuthType" : <int>,        // TODO: No implemented yet
        "RequiredMinRxInterval" : <int>,
        "DesiredMinTxInterval" : <int>,
    }
}

  • Unsubscribe from session(s):

    {
    "MsgType" : "Unsubscribe",
    "SessionID" : {
        "PeerAddr" : "<ip-addr>",
        "LocalAddr" : "<ip-addr>",
        "PeerPort" : <int>,   // Optional: Defaults to 3784
        "LocalPort" : <int>,  // Optional: Defaults to 3784
    }
}

Monitor Notifications

These are sent from the bfdd daemon to the monitor applications.

  • Session State:

    {
    "MsgType" : "Notify",
    "SessionID" : {
        "PeerAddr" : "<ip-addr>",
        "LocalAddr" : "<ip-addr>",
        "PeerPort" : <int>,   // Optional: Defaults to 3784
        "LocalPort" : <int>,  // Optional: Defaults to 3784
    },
    "State" : "AdminDown|Down|Init|Up"
}