Which statement about keepalive messages in BGP is true?

• A. BGP does not use keepalive messages.
• B. BGP uses keepalive messages, but only in the initial adjacency setup.
• C. BGP uses keepalive messages similar to those of OSPF and EIGRP.
• D. BGP uses periodic hello messages instead of keepalives.

Answer: (C)

The main idea is that BGP keeps an established session alive with periodic heartbeat messages known as KEEPALIVE. Once two BGP peers have completed the OPEN exchange and the TCP connection is up, they exchange UPDATE messages as routing information and periodically send KEEPALIVE messages to prove the connection is still healthy. The interval is tied to the configured hold time—the peer must see activity (any BGP message, including KEEPALIVE) within that window, or the session is considered down. This heartbeat concept serves the same purpose as the periodic liveness checks in other protocols like OSPF and EIGRP, even though BGP does not use Hello messages in the same way. So, describing BGP as using keepalive messages similar to those protocols best captures how liveness is maintained for the session. It’s not only during initial setup, and it isn’t about periodic Hello messages in BGP.