Feature requests

[Tore Anderson]

Hi Ondrej,

* Ondrej Zajicek

> VRRP:
> Maybe. Is there any advantage if it is integrated in routing daemon
> (instead of using independent VRRP daemon)?

See below.

> MPLS/VRF support:
> That looks interesting, but i doubt that many people uses that on Linux
> - for example MPLS forwarding for Linux is not even part of an official
> kernel source tree.

I understand that Mikrotik's RouterOS support MPLS, and that's Linux
2.6-based as far as I know. But they might have their own code for it, I
don't know.

> Possibility to configure the local network directly from BIRD:
> Using separate independent tools to do independent things is just the
> Linux way. I don't think it is a good idea to integrate this to BIRD.

I'd have to disagree with you on this. It might have been the «Linux
way» before, but only out of neccessity - there wasn't any better way of
doing it. However, intergrated solutions are now the name of the game:

* Red Hat's ifupdown suite integrates functionality from ifconfig,
route, ifenslave, vconfig, and brctl, and probably more too. This is the
standard way of configuring the network on a Red Hat machine.

* Debian's ifupdown suite: Ditto.

* kernel.org's iproute2 suite: Integrates at least functionality from
ifconfig, route, and vconfig.

* GNOME NetworkManager: Intergrates functionality from ifconfig, route,
vconfig, openvpn, vpnc, iwconfig, wpa_supplicant, probably more.

* Quagga: As well as route functionality, it intergrates ifconfig
functionality.

* Vyatta/xorp: route, ifconfig, vlans, brctl, iptables, setkey/openswan,
tunnels, vrrp, ....

* Mikrotik RouterOS: Intergrates *everything* network-related AFAIK.

Also, the same goes for non-Linux based router operating systems, for
example Juniper JunOS. I have several Juniper routers in my network and
I've never *ever* had to resort to configuring anything through the
FreeBSD shell, even though I probably could if I really wanted to.

This is, in my opinion, a huge advantage of JunOS, and probably Vyatta
and RouterOS as well (although I have less experience with these two). I
have *one* configuration file to back up - if the box explodes I can
load that file onto a new one and it'll behave in the exact same way. I
can also sit down and simply read the configuration file and get a
understanding of how everything ties together.

Reading bird's configuration file, you can see a route A via next hop B
- but where is B, exactly? No way of telling. Then you'll have to dig
through /etc to find that out. Ok, found it on vlan interface C. What
physical interface is that? Back to digging in /etc again...oh, 802.3ad
trunk D! So which are the members on that one...? And so on, and so on.

I'd strongly prefer to being able to configure A+B+C+D+[...]+Z all in
one place - it makes everything much more easy to work with. Also note
that if BIRD supported this, that wouldn't preclude people that actively
*want* to use the «Linux way» of configuring everything in as many
different places as possible from doing so. However it would also cater
for people like me, that prefer intergrated solutions. :-)

BTW, the desire to see VRRP as a native feature in BIRD is for the exact
same reason.

Best regards,
-- 
Tore Anderson
Redpill Linpro AS - http://www.redpill-linpro.com