RFC 9985 on Optimizing Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) Authentication

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        RFC 9985

        Title:      Optimizing Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) Authentication
        Author:     M. Jethanandani,
                    A. Mishra,
                    J. Haas,
                    A. Saxena,
                    M. Bhatia
        Status:     Experimental
        Stream:     IETF
        Date:       June 2026
        Mailbox:    mjethanandani@gmail.com,
                    mishra.ashesh@outlook.com,
                    jhaas@pfrc.org,
                    ankurpsaxena@gmail.com,
                    manav@ionosnetworks.com
        Pages:      20

        I-D Tag:    draft-ietf-bfd-optimizing-authentication-36

        URL:        https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9985

        DOI:        10.17487/RFC9985

This document describes an experimental optimization to Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) Authentication. This optimization enables BFD to scale better when there is a desire to use authentication where applying the same authentication mechanism to every BFD Control Packet may adversely impact performance. This optimization partitions BFD Authentication into a more computationally intensive (MCI) mechanism that is applied to BFD significant changes and a less computationally intensive (LCI) mechanism that is applied to the majority of BFD Control Packets.

This document is a product of the Bidirectional Forwarding Detection Working Group of the IETF.

EXPERIMENTAL: This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the
Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any
kind. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

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