Networks and many network applications must be robust and reliable. For these applications and services, such as packetized voice, correcting a failure must be almost instantaneous. The first step in correcting a failure is, of course, detecting that it occurred. IP routing protocols and signaling protocols as well as many application layer protocols incorporate their own keepalive mechanisms to detect failures. Typically, these protocols detect failures on the order of seconds or tens of seconds. While there are some physical and link layer technologies that inherently supply link outage detection, not all link layers do this. In order to provide for fast failure detection over any type of lower layer, an IP layer fast keepalive protocol can be used. This BOF will address the need for a general purpose keepalive mechanism between peer devices at the IP layer. As part of the BOF an initial proposal for a general-purpose peer-to-peer neighbor adjacency protocol will be presented. This proposal is designed to detect failures at the IP protocol layer over a variety of media. This protocol uses periodic hello messages between peers on the same IP subnet to determine "link aliveness." We feel that a fast IP layer keepalive is necessary to assist in detecting failures over a variety of lower layer protocols that may or may not provide this capability themselves. A generic fast hello protocol provides mainly two benefits. The first is a generic protocol for neighbor discovery. The second is support for fast link failures over any media type.