In general, techniques are described to dynamically refresh a timer for a communication session provided by a bidirectional forwarding detection (BFD) protocol. The techniques potentially mitigate network load by reducing the number of BFD packets required to maintain a BFD communication session. An example network device includes a memory, programmable processor(s), a network interface, and a control unit configured to establish a BFD communication session between the network device and a peer network device that is communicatively coupled to the network device via the network interface, determine whether a packet associated with a communication session other than the BFD communication session is a relevant packet to the BFD communication session, and in response to determining that the packet is the relevant packet, refresh a timer that executes on the network device and is associated with the BFD communication session.