Preliminary implementation of “Bidirectional Forwarding Detection” protocol for unicast and multicast

Bidirectional forwarding detection (BFD) is a flexible protocol, relatively simple and useful for unicast transmissions, but it is too complex for some applications. Therefore it will be rarely used with all its features and in many cases several parts will be eliminated. The proposed BFD implementation, called mBFD, is written in C for Linux, being an update of Tom Phelan´s solution (Sonus Networks). Although it is a part of a complex project developed at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the current version is a standalone program, but it could be integrated soon as a software module for multicast routing protocols. It will fasten their convergence, by decreasing the detection time from few minutes down to 1-2 seconds. Performances could be even better because the transmission periods and detection multipliers make the detection time as low as few milliseconds.