The present invention enhances reliable flooding of link state advertisements (LSAs) using retransmission. In accordance with the present invention, a technique is disclosed to make a retransmission timer more responsive to dynamic network conditions. This technique varies the retransmission timer value as network conditions change providing the capability to alleviate the culmination of CPU utilization and memory resource exhaustion that may arise from fast retransmission while still achieving the object of fast flooding whenever possible. The retransmission timers provided by the present invention are assigned on a "per neighbor" basis.