Display BGP gateway mode in show protocol output

[Maria Matejka]

Hello Douglas!

On Mon, Sep 08, 2025 at 08:47:46AM -0300, Douglas Fischer wrote:

> [...] 
> On the other hand, I see that there's no way to leave BIRD without enabling
> this type of more standardized interaction with configurations and
> monitoring. Which leads me to believe it makes sense to consider finding a
> solution for this through a set of other software.
> I know almost nothing about programming, but I see that in one way or
> another, tools like ARouteServer, birdwatcher, pathvector, or
> RoutingConfigApi... are already doing this, the hard way, but they do it.
> I imagine it makes sense for there to be some kind of intermediate layer
> that can be used by software like the ones mentioned.

That's, in the end, another good reason to stick to one single API
method suited for our most demanding customers (hello IXPs!) … and
for everybody who needs something more human readable while being still
parseable, there may be an intermediate layer.

Yet please note that esp. encoding IP addresses in the intermediate
layers has always been an awful mess, so the intermediate layer may
happen to behave non-intuitively when some conversions happen.

> Another point that came to mind is the use of BIRD in Kubernetes CNI
> environments. I remembered Calico using BIRD 1.6[1].
> [...]
> [1] P.S.: Does anyone have any information on whether Tigera has commented
> on this? Did they look for newer versions?

I have seen literally no communication from them ever and I have stopped
trying to reach out to them. All in all, it's valid to use old
unsupported versions if that does what you want. I personally
occasionally play abandonware games as well.

> If I understand correctly... They somehow use confd to retrieve the
> necessary objects and attributes from etcd and assemble the bird
> configuration. And in the same way, they cyclically compare these two
> things to implement some configuration resync.

I would very much say that one should simply always compile the new
config file and run `birdc conf`. BIRD does its comparison internaly
and if the config file isn't like a gigabyte or so (hello IXPs again),
this is very fast.

There are also some efforts to extend the API also to configuration but
please do not expect it in near future unless somebody really throws a
bunch of money on that and much more. This is a really big fish to fry.

Have a nice day!
Maria

-- 
Maria Matejka (she/her) | BIRD Team Leader | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.
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