timers (BGP)

Adjusts the interval at which BGP KEEPALIVE and HOLDTIME messages are sent.

Syntax

timers { keep-alive keepalive_interval hold-time holdtime_interval }

no timers

Parameters

keep-alive keepalive_interval: Frequency in seconds with which a device sends keepalive messages to a peer. Range is from 0 through 65535 seconds. The default is 60.
hold-time holdtime_interval: Interval in seconds that a device waits to receive a keepalive message from a peer before declaring that peer dead. Range is from 0 through 65535 seconds. The default is 180.

Modes

BGP configuration mode

Usage Guidelines

The KEEPALIVE and HOLDTIME message interval is overwritten when the fast-external-failover command takes effect on a down link to a peer.

You must enter a value for keep-alive before you can enter a value for hold-time. Both values must be entered. If you only want to adjust the value of one parameter, enter the default value of the parameter that you do not want to adjust.

The no form of the command clears the timers.

Examples

The following example sets the keepalive timer for a device to 120 seconds and the hold-timer to 360 seconds.

device# configure terminal
device(config)# router bgp
device(config-bgp-router)# timers keep-alive 120 hold-time 360

The following example sets the keepalive timer for a device to 0 seconds and the hold-timer to 0 seconds so that the device waits indefinitely for messages from a neighbor without tearing down the session.

device# configure terminal
device(config)# router bgp
device(config-bgp-router)# timers keep-alive 0 hold-time 0