The graceful BGP restart feature enables the switch BGP process to restart without disrupting traffic forwarding. This feature also enables the BGP process to support the graceful BGP restart of a peer router. Without graceful restart, BGP routes within the restarting router are flushed, and BGP routes through the restarting router are flushed from BGP peers. A non-graceful restart interrupts traffic for the time it takes for BGP to restart and re-establish routes, and expends additional resources during the reconvergence.