> Source: [sk115118](https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk115118)

# sk115118 - BGP failover takes 6 minutes when Graceful Restart is enabled

| Property | Value |
|----------|-------|
| Solution ID | sk115118 |
| Date Created | 2016-12-21 |
| Last Modified | 2025-08-19 |
| Technical Level | Advanced |
| Products | Security Gateway, Scalable Platforms |
| Versions | R82.10, R82, R81.20, R81.10 (EOS), R82.10, R82, R81.20, R81.10 (EOS) |
| OS | Gaia |

## Symptoms

- * BGP Graceful Restart takes 6 minutes to complete, causing cluster failover to also take 6 minutes.

* The Gaia Clish command "`show bgp peers`" shows that some peers are still in the state "`active`".

* Disabling the BGP Graceful Restart on the Security Gateway / each Cluster Member resolves the issue.

* Removing the peer that never goes to established state resolves the issue.

## Cause

When BGP Graceful Restart starts, it waits until all BGP peers are established before Graceful Restart can finish, after 6 minutes GR is forced to finish as the 6 minute graceful restart timer expires.  

During this time before BGP peers become established, all active BGP routes are synced to standby member and the traffic will still be forwarded, preventing any outage.  

If all BGP peers are not established within 6 minutes, the synchronized routes will be flushed, and the routes received from the BGP peers during the Graceful Restart process will enter the routing table anyway.

## Solution

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