FAQ-able questions for BIRD

[Martin Mares]

Hello!

> I understand the issues about Gated but why not help with the
> development of Zebra vs. create competition?

We've looked at Zebra, but we have decided that creating a new routing daemon
from scratch is about as much work as rewriting Zebra to suit all our needs.

Also, we needed some task to solve as a university project :-)

>  >BIRD has powerful configuration language.
> 
> So its unique?

Yes. It's a bit similar to the Gated's one, but especially the syntax of route
filters is a totally different animal as we use a simple programming language.
 
>  >> #3: Do you have any plans to support Multicast protocols
>  >      like DVMRP, PIM, MSDP, MBGP, etc?
>  >Yes.
> Any ETAs on any of these protocols?

Not yet. We'd like to finish IPv6 support (especially OSPFv3) first.
Anyway, if there will be any volunteers, we'll be happy to integrate
any reasonable multicast routing code and help with writing it.

>  >You may exclude or include any protocol during compilation.
> Hmmm.. that's good (better than IOS) but it would be nice if
> they could be modules that could be dynamically loaded, etc.
> Kinda like Linux kernel modules.

For userspace tasks, dynamically loaded modules are completely worthless
as Linux already uses on-demand loading for all executable files, so the
only gain you get is potentially easier packaging of modules. So unless
you are short on disk space, the best solution is to compile bird with
all protocols enabled and select what you want to use in the config file.

				Have a nice fortnight
-- 
Martin `MJ' Mares   <mj at ucw.cz>   http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mj/
Faculty of Math and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Rep., Earth
"Linux _is_ user-friendly.  It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly."