Fast Ip Connectivity and KeepaLivE
charter-ietf-fickle-01

Networks and many network applications must be robust and reliable.
For these applications and services, such as packetized voice,
correcting a failure must be almost instantaneous. The first step in
correcting a failure is, of course, detecting that it occurred. IP
routing protocols and signaling protocols as well as many application
layer protocols incorporate their own keepalive mechanisms to detect
failures. Typically, these protocols detect failures on the order of
seconds or tens of seconds. While there are some physical and link
layer technologies that inherently supply link outage detection, not
all link layers do this. In order to provide for fast failure
detection over any type of lower layer, an IP layer fast keepalive
protocol can be used.

This BOF will address the need for a general purpose keepalive
mechanism between peer devices at the IP layer. As part of the BOF an
initial proposal for a general-purpose peer-to-peer neighbor adjacency
protocol will be presented. This proposal is designed to detect
failures at the IP protocol layer over a variety of media. This
protocol uses periodic hello messages between peers on the same IP
subnet to determine "link aliveness." We feel that a fast IP layer
keepalive is necessary to assist in detecting failures over a variety
of lower layer protocols that may or may not provide this capability
themselves. A generic fast hello protocol provides mainly two
benefits. The first is a generic protocol for neighbor discovery.
The second is support for fast link failures over any media type.