System requirements for BIRD

[Sergey Popovich]

В письме от 23 декабря 2013 16:53:55 пользователь Ruben Laban написал:
> On 23-12-2013 16:30, Sergey Popovich wrote:
> > В письме от 23 декабря 2013 16:26:58 пользователь Ruben Laban написал:
> >> Wow, thanks a lot for the extensive response, Sergey! This gives me
> >> plenty of stuff to research further.
> >> 
> >> I like the iptables addrtype "trick". I was focusing on how to maintain
> >> a list of local IPs to exclude from the conntrack exclude. But this is
> >> way cleaner, great!
> > 
> > Be carefully with new kernels, they contain lots of new features, much
> > functionality and performance enhancements, however as with any products
> > they sometimes introduce regressions, bugs.
> 
> Unfortunately that's the case way more often than one would hope for :-(
> 
> > For software router I would suggest to use stable longterm kernel branches
> > such as 3.2, 3.4 and new 3.10 with a lot of performance improvements,
> > enhancements, but as for me it not yet ready for software router (few
> > patch
> > levels solve this? :-)).
> 
> What are the dealbreakers currently preventing you from using and/or
> recommending 3.10.x? I don't really follow the developments in kernel
> land, even though I should (at least more than I do now).

I would recommend to use it in test environment, not in production, at least
until 3.13 released, in upstream still many commits not picked up for stable.

3.10 is should be considered as replacement for 3.2, 3.4 on software routers
in future.

Also note, that for stable longterm branches only fixes backported, no 
functional improvements/changes. Thus not all network stack enhancements (and 
yes, even fixes!!!) backported as this takes lot of time to maintainer of
longterm branch to select and backport commits.

Also I would not recommend to use pure upstream kernel, even from stable 
branch, as many distro vendors adds additional fixes/improvements ABI
compatibility layers and other things, so using stable longterm supported
distribution is also MUST. So two things is important: longterm distribution
and longterm kernel on kernel.org (yes, some vendors decides to support 
additional kernel branches by itself, not relying on longterm kernel 
maintained by one of the kernel developers, quality of such support is 
unknown).

> 
> > 3.2, 3.4 mostly same in their functionalities, 3.2 is very stable.
> > 
> >> This might even be a good start for an optimizations page on the Bird
> >> wiki?
> > 
> > I do not think so, this is more related to software packet forwarding
> > things not for BIRD as routing suite itself. Probably better places exist
> > for such topic.
> 
> Fair point. I fully agree that it is not directly related to BIRD, but
> software packet forwarding is thing that's rather close to home for
> BIRD. Either way, you've given me plenty of food for thought already to
> get me through the holidays ;-)
> 
> Regards,
> Ruben

-- 
SP5474-RIPE
Sergey Popovich