Configuring Graceful Restart

Graceful restart allows a routing device undergoing a restart to inform its adjacent neighbors and peers of its condition. The restarting routing device requests a grace period from the neighbor or peer, which can then cooperate with the restarting routing device. With a graceful restart, the restarting routing device can still forward traffic during the restart period, and convergence in the network is not disrupted. The restart is not visible to the rest of the network, and the restarting routing device is not removed from the network topology.

The graceful restart request occurs only if the following conditions are met:

• The network topology is stable.
• The neighbor or peer cooperates.
• The restarting routing device is not already cooperating with another restart already in progress.
• The grace period does not expire.

Graceful restart is disabled by default. You must configure graceful restart at the [edit routing-options] hierarchy level to enable the feature for Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs.

To enable graceful restart, include the graceful-restart statement:

Note: Configuring graceful restart for BGP resets the BGP peer routing statistics to zero.

To disable graceful restart, include the disable statement. To configure a time period for complete restart, include the restart-duration statement. You can specify a number between 120 and 900.

For a list of hierarchy levels at which you can include this statement, see the statement summary section for this statement.

For a detailed example of a graceful restart configuration, see the Junos High Availability Configuration Guide.