Hello!
> What is the difference to/advantage over Zebra? (http://www.zebra.org/) or one
> of the gazillion other routing daemons already out there?
I would rather leave a real comparison of BIRD with the other routing daemons
to someone less biased than me, but in my eyes, the primary advantages of BIRD
are:
o Doesn't try to mimic Cisco.
o It's configured using a text configuration file, no need to think how to
express the complex changes you want to do in simple online commands.
On the other hand, when you ask it to re-read the configuration, it's
smart enough to notice what has changed and what hasn't and it avoids
restarting routing protocols unless it's needed.
o It supports multiple routing tables, so that you can use it for
policy based routing or as a route reflector (just connect several
instances of BGP to a routing table which is not synchronized with
the kernel).
o It has a powerful language for filtering of routes -- no sequential
sets of rules, just a simple programming language:
export filter {
if net ~ { 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/20, 192.168.0.0/16 } then
reject;
if bgp_path ~ / ? 65000 ? / then {
bgp_path.prepend(1234);
if bgp_community.contains((5588,1234)) then
bgp_local_pref = 10;
}
accept;
}
o On Linux, it talks to the kernel using the netlink device, so it gets
immediately notified about all interface changes.
o Supports both IPv4 and IPv6, although as a compile-time option only.
o It's GPL'ed.
o It has clean modular design with portability in mind, but still kept
at low overhead.
Known disadvantages (all of them are hopefully temporary):
o OSPF doesn't work yet (it's expected to be finished at the end of May).
o There is currently almost no documentation except a example configuration
file (real documentation excepted at start of June).
o No route aggregation / flap dampening.
o Currently works only on Linux, but porting to other OS'es should
be easy.
Have a nice fortnight
--
Martin `MJ' Mares <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mj/
"A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation."
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