An IPSec VPN connection exists as long as traffic is traversing the connection, or the timeouts have not expired. However, there are advantages to keeping the connection continuously alive, such as eliminating the waiting time necessary to construct a new IPSec VPN connection.

The Branch Gateway IPSec VPN feature supports continuous channel, which maintains a continuous IPSec VPN connection. That means that when you activate the ip crypto-group command on the defined interface, the IPSec VPN tunnel is immediately started, even if no traffic is traversing the interface and the timeouts have expired.