What is the default timer for keepalives in BGP?

• A. 15 seconds
• B. 30 seconds
• C. 90 seconds
• D. 60 seconds

Answer: (D)

In BGP, the keepalive timer controls how often a neighbor receives a keepalive message to prove the session is still up. The standard default setup uses a hold timer of 180 seconds, and the keepalive timer is set to one third of that, which is sixty seconds. This means if no BGP updates or keepalive messages are exchanged for the hold time, the session is considered down. So sixty seconds is the default keepalive interval across common implementations. The other values would either be far too aggressive or not align with the typical 1/3-of-hold-time convention, which is why sixty seconds is the correct default.