Keep-alive hiatus declaration

An apparatus, comprising:

• one or more processors;
• hiatus processing logic coupled to the one or more processors and configured to send and receive one or more units of information;
• a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising one or more stored sequences of instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform:
• determining, at a network device, an internal hiatus time period that indicates that the network device will pause emission of keep-alive messages during the internal hiatus time period and is expected to be incommunicable;
• suspending communicating with other network devices until expiration of the internal hiatus time period during which the network device is expected to be incommunicable;
• determining whether the internal hiatus time period has not expired;
• in response to determining that the internal hiatus time period has expired:
• determining whether a particular network device, of the other network devices, is unresponsive and in response thereto, determining whether one or more security associations established with the particular network device are active and in response thereto, determining a particular hiatus time period for a hiatus of the particular network device;
• determining whether the particular hiatus time period has expired and in response thereto, resuming communicating with the particular network device.