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Implements an option that allows to change a set of stub networks.
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3 <!--
4 BIRD documentation
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10 This is a slightly modified linuxdoc dtd. Anything in <descrip> tags is considered definition of
11 configuration primitives, <cf> is fragment of configuration within normal text, <m> is
12 "meta" information within fragment of configuration - something in config which is not keyword.
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15
16 Copyright 1999,2000 Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>, distribute under GPL version 2 or later.
17
18 -->
19
20 <book>
21
22 <title>BIRD User's Guide
23 <author>
24 Ondrej Filip <it/&lt;feela@network.cz&gt;/,
25 Pavel Machek <it/&lt;pavel@ucw.cz&gt;/,
26 Martin Mares <it/&lt;mj@ucw.cz&gt;/
27 </author>
28
29 <abstract>
30 This document contains user documentation for the BIRD Internet Routing Daemon project.
31 </abstract>
32
33 <!-- Table of contents -->
34 <toc>
35
36 <!-- Begin the document -->
37
38 <chapt>Introduction
39
40 <sect>What is BIRD
41
42 <p><label id="intro">
43 The name `BIRD' is actually an acronym standing for `BIRD Internet Routing Daemon'.
44 Let's take a closer look at the meaning of the name:
45
46 <p><em/BIRD/: Well, we think we have already explained that. It's an acronym standing
47 for `BIRD Internet Routing Daemon', you remember, don't you? :-)
48
49 <p><em/Internet Routing/: It's a program (well, a daemon, as you are going to discover in a moment)
50 which works as a dynamic router in an Internet type network (that is, in a network running either
51 the IPv4 or the IPv6 protocol). Routers are devices which forward packets between interconnected
52 networks in order to allow hosts not connected directly to the same local area network to
53 communicate with each other. They also communicate with the other routers in the Internet to discover
54 the topology of the network which allows them to find optimal (in terms of some metric) rules for
55 forwarding of packets (which are called routing tables) and to adapt themselves to the
56 changing conditions such as outages of network links, building of new connections and so on. Most of
57 these routers are costly dedicated devices running obscure firmware which is hard to configure and
58 not open to any changes (on the other hand, their special hardware design allows them to keep up with lots of high-speed network interfaces, better than general-purpose computer does). Fortunately, most operating systems of the UNIX family allow an ordinary
59 computer to act as a router and forward packets belonging to the other hosts, but only according to
60 a statically configured table.
61
62 <p>A <em/Routing Daemon/ is in UNIX terminology a non-interactive program running on
63 background which does the dynamic part of Internet routing, that is it communicates
64 with the other routers, calculates routing tables and sends them to the OS kernel
65 which does the actual packet forwarding. There already exist other such routing
66 daemons: routed (RIP only), GateD (non-free), Zebra<HTMLURL URL="http://www.zebra.org">
67 and MRTD<HTMLURL URL="http://sourceforge.net/projects/mrt">, but their capabilities are
68 limited and they are relatively hard to configure and maintain.
69
70 <p>BIRD is an Internet Routing Daemon designed to avoid all of these shortcomings,
71 to support all the routing technology used in the today's Internet or planned to be
72 used in near future and to have a clean extensible architecture allowing new routing
73 protocols to be incorporated easily. Among other features, BIRD supports:
74
75 <itemize>
76 <item>both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols
77 <item>multiple routing tables
78 <item>the Border Gateway Protocol (BGPv4)
79 <item>the Routing Information Protocol (RIPv2)
80 <item>the Open Shortest Path First protocol (OSPFv2)
81 <item>a virtual protocol for exchange of routes between different routing tables on a single host
82 <item>a command-line interface allowing on-line control and inspection
83 of status of the daemon
84 <item>soft reconfiguration (no need to use complex online commands
85 to change the configuration, just edit the configuration file
86 and notify BIRD to re-read it and it will smoothly switch itself
87 to the new configuration, not disturbing routing protocols
88 unless they are affected by the configuration changes)
89 <item>a powerful language for route filtering
90 </itemize>
91
92 <p>BIRD has been developed at the Faculty of Math and Physics, Charles University, Prague,
93 Czech Republic as a student project. It can be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General
94 Public License.
95
96 <p>BIRD has been designed to work on all UNIX-like systems. It has been developed and
97 tested under Linux 2.0 to 2.4, and then ported to FreeBSD and NetBSD, porting to other
98 systems (even non-UNIX ones) should be relatively easy due to its highly modular architecture.
99
100 <sect>Installing BIRD
101
102 <p>On a recent UNIX system with GNU development tools (GCC, binutils, m4, make) and Perl, installing BIRD should be as easy as:
103
104 <code>
105 ./configure
106 make
107 make install
108 vi /usr/local/etc/bird.conf
109 bird
110 </code>
111
112 <p>You can use <tt>./configure --help</tt> to get a list of configure
113 options. The most important ones are:
114 <tt/--enable-ipv6/ which enables building of an IPv6 version of BIRD,
115 <tt/--with-protocols=/ to produce a slightly smaller BIRD executable by configuring out routing protocols you don't use, and
116 <tt/--prefix=/ to install BIRD to a place different from.
117 <file>/usr/local</file>.
118
119 <sect>Running BIRD
120
121 <p>You can pass several command-line options to bird:
122
123 <descrip>
124 <tag>-c <m/config name/</tag>
125 use given configuration file instead of <it/prefix/<file>/etc/bird.conf</file>.
126
127 <tag>-d</tag>
128 enable debug messages and run bird in foreground.
129
130 <tag>-D <m/filename of debug log/</tag>
131 log debugging information to given file instead of stderr
132
133 <tag>-s <m/name of communication socket/</tag>
134 use given filename for a socket for communications with the client, default is <it/prefix/<file>/var/run/bird.ctl</file>.
135 </descrip>
136
137 <p>BIRD writes messages about its work to log files or syslog (according to config).
138
139 <chapt>About routing tables
140
141 <p>BIRD has one or more routing tables which may or may not be
142 synchronized with OS kernel and which may or may not be synchronized with
143 each other (see the Pipe protocol). Each routing table contains a list of
144 known routes. Each route consists of:
145
146 <itemize>
147 <item>network prefix this route is for (network address and prefix length -- the number of bits forming the network part of the address; also known as a netmask)
148 <item>preference of this route
149 <item>IP address of router which told us about this route
150 <item>IP address of router we should forward the packets to
151 using this route
152 <item>other attributes common to all routes
153 <item>dynamic attributes defined by protocols which may or
154 may not be present (typically protocol metrics)
155 </itemize>
156
157 Routing table maintains multiple entries
158 for a network, but at most one entry for one network and one
159 protocol. The entry with the highest preference is used for routing (we
160 will call such an entry the <it/selected route/). If
161 there are more entries with the same preference and they are from the same
162 protocol, the protocol decides (typically according to metrics). If they aren't,
163 an internal ordering is used to break the tie. You can
164 get the list of route attributes in the Route attributes section.
165
166 <p>Each protocol is connected to a routing table through two filters
167 which can accept, reject and modify the routes. An <it/export/
168 filter checks routes passed from the routing table to the protocol,
169 an <it/import/ filter checks routes in the opposite direction.
170 When the routing table gets a route from a protocol, it recalculates
171 the selected route and broadcasts it to all protocols connected to
172 the table. The protocols typically send the update to other routers
173 in the network.
174
175 <chapt>Configuration
176
177 <sect>Introduction
178
179 <p>BIRD is configured using a text configuration file. Upon startup, BIRD reads <it/prefix/<file>/etc/bird.conf</file> (unless the
180 <tt/-c/ command line option is given). Configuration may be changed at user's request: if you modify
181 the config file and then signal BIRD with <tt/SIGHUP/, it will adjust to the new
182 config. Then there's the client
183 which allows you to talk with BIRD in an extensive way.
184
185 <p>In the config, everything on a line after <cf/#/ or inside <cf>/*
186 */</cf> is a comment, whitespace characters are treated as a single space. If there's a variable number of options, they are grouped using
187 the <cf/{ }/ brackets. Each option is terminated by a <cf/;/. Configuration
188 is case sensitive.
189
190 <p>Here is an example of a simple config file. It enables
191 synchronization of routing tables with OS kernel, scans for
192 new network interfaces every 10 seconds and runs RIP on all network interfaces found.
193
194
195 <code>
196 protocol kernel {
197 persist; # Don't remove routes on BIRD shutdown
198 scan time 20; # Scan kernel routing table every 20 seconds
199 export all; # Default is export none
200 }
201
202 protocol device {
203 scan time 10; # Scan interfaces every 10 seconds
204 }
205
206 protocol rip {
207 export all;
208 import all;
209 interface "*";
210 }
211 </code>
212
213
214 <sect>Global options
215
216 <p><descrip>
217 <tag>log "<m/filename/"|syslog|stderr all|{ <m/list of classes/ }</tag>
218 Set logging of messages having the given class (either <cf/all/ or <cf/{
219 error, trace }/ etc.) into selected destination. Classes are:
220 <cf/info/, <cf/warning/, <cf/error/ and <cf/fatal/ for messages about local problems,
221 <cf/debug/ for debugging messages,
222 <cf/trace/ when you want to know what happens in the network,
223 <cf/remote/ for messages about misbehavior of remote machines,
224 <cf/auth/ about authentication failures,
225 <cf/bug/ for internal BIRD bugs. You may specify more than one <cf/log/ line to establish logging to multiple
226 destinations. Default: log everything to the system log.
227
228 <tag>debug protocols all|off|{ states, routes, filters, interfaces, events, packets }</tag>
229 Set global defaults of protocol debugging options. See <cf/debug/ in the following section. Default: off.
230
231 <tag>debug commands <m/number/</tag>
232 Control logging of client connections (0 for no logging, 1 for
233 logging of connects and disconnects, 2 and higher for logging of
234 all client commands). Default: 0.
235
236 <tag>filter <m/name local variables/{ <m/commands/ }</tag> Define a filter. You can learn more about filters
237 in the following chapter.
238
239 <tag>function <m/name/ (<m/parameters/) <m/local variables/ { <m/commands/ }</tag> Define a function. You can learn more
240 about functions in the following chapter.
241
242 <tag>protocol rip|ospf|bgp|... <m/[name]/ { <m>protocol options</m> }</tag> Define a protocol
243 instance called <cf><m/name/</cf> (or with a name like "rip5" generated automatically if you don't specify any <cf><m/name/</cf>). You can learn more
244 about configuring protocols in their own chapters. You can run more than one instance of
245 most protocols (like RIP or BGP). By default, no instances are configured.
246
247 <tag>define <m/constant/ = (<m/expression/)|<m/number/|<m/IP address/</tag> Define a constant. You can use it later in every place
248 you could use a simple integer or an IP address.
249
250 <tag>router id <m/IPv4 address/</tag> Set BIRD's router ID. It's a world-wide unique identification of your router, usually one of router's IPv4 addresses. Default: in IPv4 version, the lowest IP address of a non-loopback interface. In IPv6 version, this option is mandatory.
251
252 <tag>table <m/name/</tag> Create a new routing table. The default
253 routing table is created implicitly, other routing tables have
254 to be added by this command.
255
256 <tag>eval <m/expr/</tag> Evaluates given filter expression. It
257 is used by us for testing of filters.
258 </descrip>
259
260 <sect>Protocol options
261
262 <p>For each protocol instance, you can configure a bunch of options.
263 Some of them (those described in this section) are generic, some are
264 specific to the protocol (see sections talking about the protocols).
265
266 <p>Several options use a <cf><m/switch/</cf> argument. It can be either
267 <cf/on/, <cf/yes/ or a numeric expression with a non-zero value for the
268 option to be enabled or <cf/off/, <cf/no/ or a numeric expression evaluating
269 to zero to disable it. An empty <cf><m/switch/</cf> is equivalent to <cf/on/
270 ("silence means agreement").
271
272 <descrip>
273 <tag>preference <m/expr/</tag> Sets the preference of routes generated by this protocol. Default: protocol dependent.
274
275 <tag>disabled <m/switch/</tag> Disables the protocol. You can change the disable/enable status from the command
276 line interface without needing to touch the configuration. Disabled protocols are not activated. Default: protocol is enabled.
277
278 <tag>debug all|off|{ states, routes, filters, interfaces, events, packets }</tag>
279 Set protocol debugging options. If asked, each protocol is capable of
280 writing trace messages about its work to the log (with category
281 <cf/trace/). You can either request printing of <cf/all/ trace messages
282 or only of the types selected: <cf/states/ for protocol state changes
283 (protocol going up, down, starting, stopping etc.),
284 <cf/routes/ for routes exchanged with the routing table,
285 <cf/filters/ for details on route filtering,
286 <cf/interfaces/ for interface change events sent to the protocol,
287 <cf/events/ for events internal to the protocol and
288 <cf/packets/ for packets sent and received by the protocol. Default: off.
289
290 <tag>import all | none | filter <m/name/ | filter { <m/filter commands/ } | where <m/filter expression/</tag>
291 Specify a filter to be used for filtering routes coming from the protocol to the routing table. <cf/all/ is shorthand for <cf/where true/ and <cf/none/ is shorthand for <cf/where false/. Default: <cf/all/.
292
293 <tag>export <m/filter/</tag> This is similar to the <cf>import</cf> keyword, except that it
294 works in the direction from the routing table to the protocol. Default: <cf/none/.
295
296 <tag>table <m/name/</tag> Connect this protocol to a non-default routing table.
297 </descrip>
298
299 <p>There are several options that give sense only with certain protocols:
300
301 <descrip>
302 <tag><label id="dsc-iface">interface [-] [ "<m/mask/" ] [ <m/prefix/ ] [, ...] [ { <m/option/ ; [...] } ]</tag>
303
304 Specifies a set of interfaces on which the protocol is activated with
305 given interface-specific options. A set of interfaces specified by one
306 interface option is described using an interface pattern. The
307 interface pattern consists of a sequence of clauses (separted by
308 commas), each clause may contain a mask, a prefix, or both of them. An
309 interface matches the clause if its name matches the mask (if
310 specified) and its address matches the prefix (if specified). Mask is
311 specified as shell-like pattern.
312
313 An interface matches the pattern if it matches any of its
314 clauses. If the clause begins with <cf/-/, matching interfaces are
315 excluded. Patterns are parsed left-to-right, thus
316 <cf/interface "eth0", -"eth*", "*";/ means eth0 and all
317 non-ethernets.
318
319 An interface option can be used more times with different
320 interfaces-specific options, in that case for given interface
321 the first matching interface option is used.
322
323 This option is allowed in Direct, OSPF and RIP protocols,
324 but in OSPF protocol it is used in <cf/area/ subsection.
325
326 Default: none.
327
328 Examples:
329
330 <cf>interface "*" { type broadcast; };</cf> - start the protocol on all interfaces with
331 <cf>type broadcast</cf> option.
332
333 <cf>interface "eth1", "eth4", "eth5" { type pointopoint; };</cf> - start the protocol
334 on enumerated interfaces with <cf>type pointopoint</cf> option.
335
336 <cf>interface -192.168.1.0/24, 192.168.0.0/16;</cf> - start the protocol on all
337 interfaces that have address from 192.168.0.0/16, but not
338 from 192.168.1.0/24.
339
340 <cf>interface -192.168.1.0/24, 192.168.0.0/16;</cf> - start the protocol on all
341 interfaces that have address from 192.168.0.0/16, but not
342 from 192.168.1.0/24.
343
344 <cf>interface "eth*" 192.168.1.0/24;</cf> - start the protocol on all
345 ethernet interfaces that have address from 192.168.1.0/24.
346
347 <tag><label id="dsc-pass">password "<m/password/" [ { id <m/num/; generate from <m/time/; generate to <m/time/; accept from <m/time/; accept to <m/time/; } ]</tag>
348 Specifies a password that can be used by the protocol. Password option can
349 be used more times to specify more passwords. If more passwords are
350 specified, it is a protocol-dependent decision which one is really
351 used. Specifying passwords does not mean that authentication is
352 enabled, authentication can be enabled by separate, protocol-dependent
353 <cf/authentication/ option.
354
355 This option is allowed in OSPF and RIP protocols. BGP has also
356 <cf/password/ option, but it is slightly different and described
357 separately.
358
359 Default: none.
360 </descrip>
361
362 <p>Password option can contain section with some (not necessary all) password sub-options:
363
364 <descrip>
365 <tag>id <M>num</M></tag>
366 ID of the password, (0-255). If it's not used, BIRD will choose
367 ID based on an order of the password item in the interface. For
368 example, second password item in one interface will have default
369 ID 2. ID is used by some routing protocols to identify which
370 password was used to authenticate protocol packets.
371
372 <tag>generate from "<m/time/"</tag>
373 The start time of the usage of the password for packet signing.
374 The format of <cf><m/time/</cf> is <tt>dd-mm-yyyy HH:MM:SS</tt>.
375
376 <tag>generate to "<m/time/"</tag>
377 The last time of the usage of the password for packet signing.
378
379 <tag>accept from "<m/time/"</tag>
380 The start time of the usage of the password for packet verification.
381
382 <tag>accept to "<m/time/"</tag>
383 The last time of the usage of the password for packet verification.
384 </descrip>
385
386 <chapt>Remote control
387
388 <p>You can use the command-line client <file>birdc</file> to talk with
389 a running BIRD. Communication is done using a <file/bird.ctl/ UNIX domain
390 socket (unless changed with the <tt/-s/ option given to both the server and
391 the client). The commands can perform simple actions such as enabling/disabling
392 of protocols, telling BIRD to show various information, telling it to
393 show routing table filtered by filter, or asking BIRD to
394 reconfigure. Press <tt/?/ at any time to get online help. Option
395 <tt/-v/ can be passed to the client, to make it dump numeric return
396 codes along with the messages. You do not necessarily need to use <file/birdc/ to talk to BIRD, your
397 own applications could do that, too -- the format of communication between
398 BIRD and <file/birdc/ is stable (see the programmer's documentation).
399
400 Many commands have the <m/name/ of the protocol instance as an argument.
401 This argument can be omitted if there exists only a single instance.
402
403 <p>Here is a brief list of supported functions:
404
405 <descrip>
406 <tag>dump resources|sockets|interfaces|neighbors|attributes|routes|protocols</tag>
407 Dump contents of internal data structures to the debugging output.
408
409 <tag>show status</tag>
410 Show router status, that is BIRD version, uptime and time from last reconfiguration.
411
412 <tag>show protocols [all]</tag>
413 Show list of protocol instances along with tables they are connected to and protocol status, possibly giving verbose information, if <cf/all/ is specified.
414
415 <tag>show ospf interface [<m/name/] ["<m/interface/"]</tag>
416 Show detailed information about OSPF interfaces.
417
418 <tag>show ospf neighbors [<m/name/] ["<m/interface/"]</tag>
419 Show a list of OSPF neighbors and a state of adjacency to them.
420
421 <tag>show ospf state [<m/name/]</tag>
422 Show detailed information about OSPF areas based on a content of link-state database.
423 It shows network topology, aggregated networks and routers from other areas and external routes.
424
425 <tag>show ospf topology [<m/name/]</tag>
426 Show a topology of OSPF areas based on a content of link-state database.
427 It is just a stripped-down version of 'show ospf state'.
428
429 <tag>show static [<m/name/]</tag>
430 Show detailed information about static routes.
431
432 <tag>show interfaces [summary]</tag>
433 Show the list of interfaces. For each interface, print its type, state, MTU and addresses assigned.
434
435 <tag>show symbols</tag>
436 Show the list of symbols defined in the configuration (names of protocols, routing tables etc.).
437
438 <tag>show route [[for] <m/prefix/|<m/IP/] [table <m/sym/] [filter <m/f/|where <m/c/] [(export|preexport) <m/p/] [protocol <m/p/] [<m/options/]</tag>
439 Show contents of a routing table (by default of the main one),
440 that is routes, their metrics and (in case the <cf/all/ switch is given)
441 all their attributes.
442
443 <p>You can specify a <m/prefix/ if you want to print routes for a
444 specific network. If you use <cf>for <m/prefix or IP/</cf>, you'll get
445 the entry which will be used for forwarding of packets to the given
446 destination. By default, all routes for each network are printed with
447 the selected one at the top, unless <cf/primary/ is given in which case
448 only the selected route is shown.
449
450 <p>You can also ask for printing only routes processed and accepted by
451 a given filter (<cf>filter <m/name/</cf> or <cf>filter { <m/filter/ }
452 </cf> or matching a given condition (<cf>where <m/condition/</cf>).
453 The <cf/export/ and <cf/preexport/ switches ask for printing of entries
454 that are exported to the specified protocol. With <cf/preexport/, the
455 export filter of the protocol is skipped.
456
457 <p>You can also select just routes added by a specific protocol.
458 <cf>protocol <m/p/</cf>.
459
460 <p>The <cf/stats/ switch requests showing of route statistics (the
461 number of networks, number of routes before and after filtering). If
462 you use <cf/count/ instead, only the statistics will be printed.
463
464 <tag>enable|disable|restart <m/name/|"<m/pattern/"|all</tag>
465 Enable, disable or restart a given protocol instance, instances matching the <cf><m/pattern/</cf> or <cf/all/ instances.
466
467 <tag>configure ["<m/config file/"]</tag>
468 Reload configuration from a given file.
469
470 <tag/down/
471 Shut BIRD down.
472
473 <tag>debug <m/protocol/|<m/pattern/|all all|off|{ states | routes | filters | events | packets }</tag>
474 Control protocol debugging.
475 </descrip>
476
477 <chapt>Filters
478
479 <sect>Introduction
480
481 <p>BIRD contains a simple programming language. (No, it can't yet read mail :-). There are
482 two objects in this language: filters and functions. Filters are interpreted by BIRD core when a route is
483 being passed between protocols and routing tables. The filter language contains control structures such
484 as if's and switches, but it allows no loops. An example of a filter using many features can be found in <file>filter/test.conf</file>.
485
486 <p>Filter gets the route, looks at its attributes and
487 modifies some of them if it wishes. At the end, it decides whether to
488 pass the changed route through (using <cf/accept/) or whether to <cf/reject/ it. A simple filter looks
489 like this:
490
491 <code>
492 filter not_too_far
493 int var;
494 {
495 if defined( rip_metric ) then
496 var = rip_metric;
497 else {
498 var = 1;
499 rip_metric = 1;
500 }
501 if rip_metric &gt; 10 then
502 reject "RIP metric is too big";
503 else
504 accept "ok";
505 }
506 </code>
507
508 <p>As you can see, a filter has a header, a list of local variables, and a body. The header consists of
509 the <cf/filter/ keyword followed by a (unique) name of filter. The list of local variables consists of
510 <cf><M>type name</M>;</cf> pairs where each pair defines one local variable. The body consists of
511 <cf> { <M>statements</M> }</cf>. Each <m/statement/ is terminated by a <cf/;/. You can group
512 several statements to a single compound statement by using braces (<cf>{ <M>statements</M> }</cf>) which is useful if
513 you want to make a bigger block of code conditional.
514
515 <p>BIRD supports functions, so that you don't have to repeat the same blocks of code over and
516 over. Functions can have zero or more parameters and they can have local variables. Recursion is not allowed. Function definitions
517 look like this:
518
519 <code>
520 function name ()
521 int local_variable;
522 {
523 local_variable = 5;
524 }
525
526 function with_parameters (int parameter)
527 {
528 print parameter;
529 }
530 </code>
531
532 <p>Unlike in C, variables are declared after the <cf/function/ line, but before the first <cf/{/. You can't declare
533 variables in nested blocks. Functions are called like in C: <cf>name();
534 with_parameters(5);</cf>. Function may return values using the <cf>return <m/[expr]/</cf>
535 command. Returning a value exits from current function (this is similar to C).
536
537 <p>Filters are declared in a way similar to functions except they can't have explicit
538 parameters. They get a route table entry as an implicit parameter, it is also passed automatically
539 to any functions called. The filter must terminate with either
540 <cf/accept/ or <cf/reject/ statement. If there's a runtime error in filter, the route
541 is rejected.
542
543 <p>A nice trick to debug filters is to use <cf>show route filter
544 <m/name/</cf> from the command line client. An example session might look
545 like:
546
547 <code>
548 pavel@bug:~/bird$ ./birdc -s bird.ctl
549 BIRD 0.0.0 ready.
550 bird> show route
551 10.0.0.0/8 dev eth0 [direct1 23:21] (240)
552 195.113.30.2/32 dev tunl1 [direct1 23:21] (240)
553 127.0.0.0/8 dev lo [direct1 23:21] (240)
554 bird> show route ?
555 show route [<prefix>] [table <t>] [filter <f>] [all] [primary]...
556 bird> show route filter { if 127.0.0.5 &tilde; net then accept; }
557 127.0.0.0/8 dev lo [direct1 23:21] (240)
558 bird>
559 </code>
560
561 <sect>Data types
562
563 <p>Each variable and each value has certain type. Booleans, integers and enums are
564 incompatible with each other (that is to prevent you from shooting in the foot).
565
566 <descrip>
567 <tag/bool/ This is a boolean type, it can have only two values, <cf/true/ and
568 <cf/false/. Boolean is the only type you can use in <cf/if/
569 statements.
570
571 <tag/int/ This is a general integer type, you can expect it to store signed values from -2000000000
572 to +2000000000. Overflows are not checked. You can use <cf/0x1234/ syntax to write hexadecimal values.
573
574 <tag/pair/ This is a pair of two short integers. Each component can have values from 0 to
575 65535. Literals of this type are written as <cf/(1234,5678)/. The same syntax can also be
576 used to construct a pair from two arbitrary integer expressions (for example <cf/(1+2,a)/).
577
578 <tag/string/ This is a string of characters. There are no ways to modify strings in
579 filters. You can pass them between functions, assign them to variables of type <cf/string/, print
580 such variables, but you can't concatenate two strings. String literals
581 are written as <cf/"This is a string constant"/.
582
583 <tag/ip/ This type can hold a single IP address. Depending on the compile-time configuration of BIRD you are using, it
584 is either an IPv4 or IPv6 address. IP addresses are written in the standard notation (<cf/10.20.30.40/ or <cf/fec0:3:4::1/). You can apply special operator <cf>.mask(<M>num</M>)</cf>
585 on values of type ip. It masks out all but first <cf><M>num</M></cf> bits from the IP
586 address. So <cf/1.2.3.4.mask(8) = 1.0.0.0/ is true.
587
588 <tag/prefix/ This type can hold a network prefix consisting of IP address and prefix length. Prefix literals are written as
589 <cf><M>ipaddress</M>/<M>pxlen</M></cf>, or
590 <cf><m>ipaddress</m>/<m>netmask</m></cf>. There are two special
591 operators on prefixes:
592 <cf/.ip/ which extracts the IP address from the pair, and <cf/.len/, which separates prefix
593 length from the pair. So <cf>1.2.0.0/16.pxlen = 16</cf> is true.
594
595 <tag/int|ip|prefix|pair|enum set/
596 Filters recognize four types of sets. Sets are similar to strings: you can pass them around
597 but you can't modify them. Literals of type <cf>set int</cf> look like <cf>
598 [ 1, 2, 5..7 ]</cf>. As you can see, both simple values and ranges are permitted in
599 sets.
600
601 Sets of prefixes are special: their literals does not allow ranges, but allows
602 prefix patterns that are written as <cf><M>ipaddress</M>/<M>pxlen</M>{<M>low</M>,<M>high</M>}</cf>.
603 Prefix <cf><m>ip1</m>/<m>len1</m></cf> matches prefix pattern <cf><m>ip2</m>/<m>len2</m>{<m>l</m>,<m>h</m>}</cf> iff
604 the first <cf>min(len1, len2)</cf> bits of <cf/ip1/ and <cf/ip2/ are identical and <cf>len1 &lt;= ip1 &lt;= len2</cf>.
605 A valid prefix pattern has to satisfy <cf>low &lt;= high</cf>, but <cf/pxlen/ is not constrained by <cf/low/
606 or <cf/high/. Obviously, a prefix matches a prefix set literal iff it matches any prefix pattern in the
607 prefix set literal.
608
609 There are also two shorthands for prefix patterns: <cf><m>address</m>/<m/len/+</cf> is a shorthand for
610 <cf><m>address</m>/<m/len/{<m/len/,<m/maxlen/}</cf> (where <cf><m>maxlen</m></cf> is 32 for IPv4 and 128 for IPv6),
611 that means network prefix <cf><m>address</m>/<m/len/</cf> and all its subnets. <cf><m>address</m>/<m/len/-</cf>
612 is a shorthand for <cf><m>address</m>/<m/len/{0,<m/len/}</cf>, that means network prefix <cf><m>address</m>/<m/len/</cf>
613 and all its supernets (network prefixes that contain it).
614
615 For example, <cf>[ 1.0.0.0/8, 2.0.0.0/8+, 3.0.0.0/8-, 4.0.0.0/8{16,24} ]</cf> matches
616 prefix <cf>1.0.0.0/8</cf>, all subprefixes of <cf>2.0.0.0/8</cf>, all superprefixes of <cf>3.0.0.0/8</cf> and prefixes
617 <cf/4.X.X.X/ whose prefix length is 16 to 24. <cf>[ 0.0.0.0/0{20,24} ]</cf> matches all prefixes (regardless of
618 IP address) whose prefix length is 20 to 24, <cf>[ 1.2.3.4/32- ]</cf> matches any prefix that contains IP address
619 <cf>1.2.3.4</cf>. <cf>1.2.0.0/16 &tilde; [ 1.0.0.0/8{15,17} ]</cf> is true,
620 but <cf>1.0.0.0/16 &tilde; [ 1.0.0.0/8- ]</cf> is false.
621
622 Cisco-style patterns like <cf>10.0.0.0/8 ge 16 le 24</cf> can be expressed
623 in Bird as <cf>10.0.0.0/8{16,24}</cf>, <cf>192.168.0.0/16 le 24</cf> as
624 <cf>192.168.0.0/16{16,24}</cf> and <cf>192.168.0.0/16 ge 24</cf> as
625 <cf>192.168.0.0/16{24,32}</cf>.
626
627 <tag/enum/
628 Enumeration types are fixed sets of possibilities. You can't define your own
629 variables of such type, but some route attributes are of enumeration
630 type. Enumeration types are incompatible with each other.
631
632 <tag/bgppath/
633 BGP path is a list of autonomous system numbers. You can't write literals of this type.
634
635 <tag/bgpmask/
636 BGP masks are patterns used for BGP path matching
637 (using <cf>path &tilde; [= 2 3 5 * =]</cf> syntax). The masks
638 resemble wildcard patterns as used by UNIX shells. Autonomous
639 system numbers match themselves, <cf/*/ matches any (even empty)
640 sequence of arbitrary AS numbers and <cf/?/ matches one arbitrary AS number.
641 For example, if <cf>bgp_path</cf> is 4 3 2 1, then:
642 <tt>bgp_path &tilde; [= * 4 3 * =]</tt> is true, but
643 <tt>bgp_path &tilde; [= * 4 5 * =]</tt> is false.
644 BGP mask expressions can also contain integer expressions enclosed in parenthesis
645 and integer variables, for example <tt>[= * 4 (1+2) a =]</tt>.
646 There is also old syntax that uses / .. / instead of [= .. =] and ? instead of *.
647 <tag/clist/
648 Community list is similar to set of pairs,
649 except that unlike other sets, it can be modified.
650 There exist no literals of this type.
651
652 </descrip>
653
654 <sect>Operators
655
656 <p>The filter language supports common integer operators <cf>(+,-,*,/)</cf>, parentheses <cf/(a*(b+c))/, comparison
657 <cf/(a=b, a!=b, a&lt;b, a&gt;=b)/. Logical operations include unary not (<cf/!/), and (<cf/&amp;&amp;/) and or (<cf/&verbar;&verbar;/).
658 Special operators include <cf/&tilde;/ for "is element of a set" operation - it can be
659 used on element and set of elements of the same type (returning true if element is contained in the given set), or
660 on two strings (returning true if first string matches a shell-like pattern stored in second string) or on IP and prefix (returning true if IP is within the range defined by that prefix), or on
661 prefix and prefix (returning true if first prefix is more specific than second one) or on bgppath and bgpmask (returning true if the path matches the mask) or on pair and clist (returning true if the community is element of the community list).
662
663
664 <sect>Control structures
665
666 <p>Filters support two control structures: conditions and case switches.
667
668 <p>Syntax of a condition is: <cf>if
669 <M>boolean expression</M> then <M>command1</M>; else <M>command2</M>;</cf> and you can use <cf>{
670 <M>command_1</M>; <M>command_2</M>; <M>...</M> }</cf> instead of either command. The <cf>else</cf>
671 clause may be omitted. If the <cf><m>boolean expression</m></cf> is true, <cf><m>command1</m></cf> is executed, otherwise <cf><m>command2</m></cf> is executed.
672
673 <p>The <cf>case</cf> is similar to case from Pascal. Syntax is <cf>case <m/expr/ { else |
674 <m/num_or_prefix [ .. num_or_prefix]/: <m/statement/ ; [ ... ] }</cf>. The expression after
675 <cf>case</cf> can be of any type which can be on the left side of the &tilde; operator and anything that could
676 be a member of a set is allowed before <cf/:/. Multiple commands are allowed without <cf/{}/ grouping.
677 If <cf><m/expr/</cf> matches one of the <cf/:/ clauses, statements between it and next <cf/:/ statement are executed. If <cf><m/expr/</cf> matches neither of the <cf/:/ clauses, the statements after <cf/else:/ are executed.
678
679 <p>Here is example that uses <cf/if/ and <cf/case/ structures:
680
681 <code>
682 case arg1 {
683 2: print "two"; print "I can do more commands without {}";
684 3 .. 5: print "three to five";
685 else: print "something else";
686 }
687
688 if 1234 = i then printn "."; else {
689 print "not 1234";
690 print "You need {} around multiple commands";
691 }
692 </code>
693
694 <sect>Route attributes
695
696 <p>A filter is implicitly passed a route, and it can access its
697 attributes just like it accesses variables. Attempts to access undefined
698 attribute result in a runtime error; you can check if an attribute is
699 defined by using the <cf>defined( <m>attribute</m> )</cf> operator.
700
701 <descrip>
702 <tag><m/prefix/ net</tag>
703 Network the route is talking about. Read-only. (See the chapter about routing tables.)
704
705 <tag><m/enum/ scope</tag>
706 Address scope of the network (<cf/SCOPE_HOST/ for addresses local to this host, <cf/SCOPE_LINK/ for those specific for a physical link, <cf/SCOPE_SITE/ and <cf/SCOPE_ORGANIZATION/ for private addresses, <cf/SCOPE_UNIVERSE/ for globally visible addresses).
707
708 <tag><m/int/ preference</tag>
709 Preference of the route. (See the chapter about routing tables.)
710
711 <tag><m/ip/ from</tag>
712 The router which the route has originated from. Read-only.
713
714 <tag><m/ip/ gw</tag>
715 Next hop packets routed using this route should be forwarded to.
716
717 <tag><m/string/ proto</tag>
718 The name of the protocol which the route has been imported from. Read-only.
719
720 <tag><m/enum/ source</tag>
721 what protocol has told me about this route. Possible values: <cf/RTS_DUMMY/, <cf/RTS_STATIC/, <cf/RTS_INHERIT/, <cf/RTS_DEVICE/, <cf/RTS_STATIC_DEVICE/, <cf/RTS_REDIRECT/, <cf/RTS_RIP/, <cf/RTS_OSPF/, <cf/RTS_OSPF_IA/, <cf/RTS_OSPF_EXT/, <cf/RTS_BGP/, <cf/RTS_PIPE/.
722
723 <tag><m/enum/ cast</tag>
724 Route type (<cf/RTC_UNICAST/ for normal routes, <cf/RTC_BROADCAST/, <cf/RTC_MULTICAST/, <cf/RTC_ANYCAST/ for broadcast, multicast and anycast routes). Read-only.
725
726 <tag><m/enum/ dest</tag>
727 Type of destination the packets should be sent to (<cf/RTD_ROUTER/ for forwarding to a neighboring router, <cf/RTD_NETWORK/ for routing to a directly-connected network, <cf/RTD_BLACKHOLE/ for packets to be silently discarded, <cf/RTD_UNREACHABLE/, <cf/RTD_PROHIBIT/ for packets that should be returned with ICMP host unreachable / ICMP administratively prohibited messages). Read-only.
728 </descrip>
729
730 <p>There also exist some protocol-specific attributes which are described in the corresponding protocol sections.
731
732 <sect>Other statements
733
734 <p>The following statements are available:
735
736 <descrip>
737 <tag><m/variable/ = <m/expr/</tag> Set variable to a given value.
738
739 <tag>accept|reject [ <m/expr/ ]</tag> Accept or reject the route, possibly printing <cf><m>expr</m></cf>.
740
741 <tag>return <m/expr/</tag> Return <cf><m>expr</m></cf> from the current function, the function ends at this point.
742
743 <tag>print|printn <m/expr/ [<m/, expr.../]</tag>
744 Prints given expressions; useful mainly while debugging
745 filters. The <cf/printn/ variant does not terminate the line.
746
747 <tag>quitbird</tag>
748 Terminates BIRD. Useful when debugging the filter interpreter.
749 </descrip>
750
751 <chapt>Protocols
752
753 <sect>BGP
754
755 <p>The Border Gateway Protocol is the routing protocol used for backbone
756 level routing in the today's Internet. Contrary to the other protocols, its convergence
757 doesn't rely on all routers following the same rules for route selection,
758 making it possible to implement any routing policy at any router in the
759 network, the only restriction being that if a router advertises a route,
760 it must accept and forward packets according to it.
761
762 <p>BGP works in terms of autonomous systems (often abbreviated as AS). Each
763 AS is a part of the network with common management and common routing policy. It is identified by a unique 16-bit number.
764 Routers within each AS usually communicate with each other using either a interior routing
765 protocol (such as OSPF or RIP) or an interior variant of BGP (called iBGP).
766 Boundary routers at the border of the AS communicate with their peers
767 in the neighboring AS'es via exterior BGP (eBGP).
768
769 <p>Each BGP router sends to its neighbors updates of the parts of its
770 routing table it wishes to export along with complete path information
771 (a list of AS'es the packet will travel through if it uses the particular
772 route) in order to avoid routing loops.
773
774 <p>BIRD supports all requirements of the BGP4 standard as defined in
775 RFC 4271<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc4271.txt">
776 It also supports the community attributes
777 (RFC 1997<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1997.txt">),
778 capability negotiation
779 (RFC 3392<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3392.txt">),
780 MD5 password authentication
781 (RFC 2385<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2385.txt">),
782 route reflectors
783 (RFC 4456<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc4456.txt">),
784 multiprotocol extensions
785 (RFC 4760<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc4760.txt">),
786 and 4B AS numbers
787 (RFC 4893<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc4893.txt">).
788
789
790 For IPv6, it uses the standard multiprotocol extensions defined in
791 RFC 2283<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2283.txt">
792 including changes described in the
793 latest draft<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-idr-bgp4-multiprotocol-v2-05.txt">
794 and applied to IPv6 according to
795 RFC 2545<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2545.txt">.
796
797 <sect1>Route selection rules
798
799 <p>BGP doesn't have any simple metric, so the rules for selection of an optimal
800 route among multiple BGP routes with the same preference are a bit more complex
801 and they are implemented according to the following algorithm. It starts the first
802 rule, if there are more "best" routes, then it uses the second rule to choose
803 among them and so on.
804
805 <itemize>
806 <item>Prefer route with the highest Local Preference attribute.
807 <item>Prefer route with the shortest AS path.
808 <item>Prefer IGP origin over EGP and EGP over incomplete.
809 <item>Prefer the lowest value of the Multiple Exit Discriminator.
810 <item>Prefer internal routes over external ones.
811 <item>Prefer the route with the lowest value of router ID of the
812 advertising router.
813 </itemize>
814
815 <sect1>Configuration
816
817 <p>Each instance of the BGP corresponds to one neighboring router.
818 This allows to set routing policy and all the other parameters differently
819 for each neighbor using the following configuration parameters:
820
821 <descrip>
822 <tag>local as <m/number/</tag> Define which AS we are part of. (Note that
823 contrary to other IP routers, BIRD is able to act as a router located
824 in multiple AS'es simultaneously, but in such cases you need to tweak
825 the BGP paths manually in the filters to get consistent behavior.)
826 This parameter is mandatory.
827
828 <tag>neighbor <m/ip/ as <m/number/</tag> Define neighboring router
829 this instance will be talking to and what AS it's located in. Unless
830 you use the <cf/multihop/ clause, it must be directly connected to one
831 of your router's interfaces. In case the neighbor is in the same AS
832 as we are, we automatically switch to iBGP. This parameter is mandatory.
833
834 <tag>multihop <m/number/ via <m/ip/</tag> Configure multihop BGP to a
835 neighbor which is connected at most <m/number/ hops far and to which
836 we should route via our direct neighbor with address <m/ip/.
837 Default: switched off.
838
839 <tag>next hop self</tag> Avoid calculation of the Next Hop attribute
840 and always advertise our own source address (see below) as a next hop.
841 This needs to be used only
842 occasionally to circumvent misconfigurations of other routers.
843 Default: disabled.
844
845 <tag>source address <m/ip/</tag> Define local address we should use
846 for next hop calculation. Default: the address of the local end
847 of the interface our neighbor is connected to.
848
849 <tag>password <m/string/</tag> Use this password for MD5 authentication
850 of BGP sessions. Default: no authentication. Password has to be set by
851 external utility (e.g. setkey(8)) on BSD systems.
852
853 <tag>rr client</tag> Be a route reflector and treat the neighbor as
854 a route reflection client. Default: disabled.
855
856 <tag>rr cluster id <m/IPv4 address/</tag> Route reflectors use cluster id
857 to avoid route reflection loops. When there is one route reflector in a cluster
858 it usually uses its router id as a cluster id, but when there are more route
859 reflectors in a cluster, these need to be configured (using this option) to
860 use a common cluster id. Clients in a cluster need not know their cluster
861 id and this option is not allowed for them. Default: the same as router id.
862
863 <tag>rs client</tag> Be a route server and treat the neighbor
864 as a route server client. A route server is used as a
865 replacement for full mesh EBGP routing in Internet exchange
866 points in a similar way to route reflectors used in IBGP routing.
867 Bird does not implement obsoleted RFC 1863, but uses ad-hoc implementation,
868 which behaves like plain EBGP but reduces modifications to advertised route
869 attributes to be transparent (for example does not prepend its AS number to
870 AS PATH attribute and keep MED attribute). Default: disabled.
871
872 <tag>enable as4 <m/switch/</tag> BGP protocol was designed to use 2B AS numbers
873 and was extended later to allow 4B AS number. BIRD supports 4B AS extension,
874 but by disabling this option it can be persuaded not to advertise it and
875 to maintain old-style sessions with its neighbors. This might be useful for
876 circumventing bugs in neighbor's implementation of 4B AS extension.
877 Even when disabled (off), BIRD behaves internally as AS4-aware BGP router.
878 Default: on.
879
880 <tag>capabilities <m/switch/</tag> Use capability advertisement
881 to advertise optional capabilities. This is standard behavior
882 for newer BGP implementations, but there might be some older
883 BGP implementations that reject such connection attempts.
884 When disabled (off), features that request it (4B AS support)
885 are also disabled. Default: on, with automatic fallback to
886 off when received capability-related error.
887
888 <tag>advertise ipv4 <m/switch/</tag> Advertise IPv4 multiprotocol capability.
889 This is not a correct behavior according to the strict interpretation
890 of RFC 4760, but it is widespread and required by some BGP
891 implementations (Cisco and Quagga). This option is relevant
892 to IPv4 mode with enabled capability advertisement only. Default: on.
893
894 <tag>route limit <m/number/</tag> The maximal number of routes
895 that may be imported from the protocol. If the route limit is
896 exceeded, the connection is closed with error. Default: no limit.
897
898 <tag>disable after error <m/switch/</tag> When an error is encountered (either
899 locally or by the other side), disable the instance automatically
900 and wait for an administrator to fix the problem manually. Default: off.
901
902 <tag>hold time <m/number/</tag> Time in seconds to wait for a Keepalive
903 message from the other side before considering the connection stale.
904 Default: depends on agreement with the neighboring router, we prefer
905 240 seconds if the other side is willing to accept it.
906
907 <tag>startup hold time <m/number/</tag> Value of the hold timer used
908 before the routers have a chance to exchange open messages and agree
909 on the real value. Default: 240 seconds.
910
911 <tag>keepalive time <m/number/</tag> Delay in seconds between sending
912 of two consecutive Keepalive messages. Default: One third of the hold time.
913
914 <tag>connect retry time <m/number/</tag> Time in seconds to wait before
915 retrying a failed attempt to connect. Default: 120 seconds.
916
917 <tag>start delay time <m/number/</tag> Delay in seconds between protocol
918 startup and the first attempt to connect. Default: 5 seconds.
919
920 <tag>error wait time <m/number/,<m/number/</tag> Minimum and maximum delay in seconds between a protocol
921 failure (either local or reported by the peer) and automatic restart.
922 Doesn't apply when <cf/disable after error/ is configured. If consecutive
923 errors happen, the delay is increased exponentially until it reaches the maximum. Default: 60, 300.
924
925 <tag>error forget time <m/number/</tag> Maximum time in seconds between two protocol
926 failures to treat them as a error sequence which makes the <cf/error wait time/
927 increase exponentially. Default: 300 seconds.
928
929 <tag>path metric <m/switch/</tag> Enable comparison of path lengths
930 when deciding which BGP route is the best one. Default: on.
931
932 <tag>default bgp_med <m/number/</tag> Value of the Multiple Exit
933 Discriminator to be used during route selection when the MED attribute
934 is missing. Default: 0.
935
936 <tag>default bgp_local_pref <m/number/</tag> Value of the Local Preference
937 to be used during route selection when the Local Preference attribute
938 is missing. Default: 0.
939 </descrip>
940
941 <sect1>Attributes
942
943 <p>BGP defines several route attributes. Some of them (those marked with `<tt/I/' in the
944 table below) are available on internal BGP connections only, some of them (marked
945 with `<tt/O/') are optional.
946
947 <descrip>
948 <tag>bgppath <cf/bgp_path/</tag> Sequence of AS numbers describing the AS path
949 the packet will travel through when forwarded according to the particular route. In case of
950 internal BGP it doesn't contain the number of the local AS.
951
952 <tag>int <cf/bgp_local_pref/ [I]</tag> Local preference value used for
953 selection among multiple BGP routes (see the selection rules above). It's
954 used as an additional metric which is propagated through the whole local AS.
955
956 <tag>int <cf/bgp_med/ [O]</tag> The Multiple Exit Discriminator of the route
957 is an optional attribute which is used on on external (inter-AS) links to
958 convey to an adjacent AS the optimal entry point into the local AS.
959 The received attribute may be also propagated over internal BGP links
960 (and this is default behavior). The attribute value is zeroed when a route
961 is exported from a routing table to a BGP instance to ensure that the attribute
962 received from a neighboring AS is not propagated to other neighboring ASes.
963 A new value might be set in the export filter of a BGP instance.
964 See RFC 4451<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc4451.txt">
965 for further discussion of BGP MED attribute.
966
967 <tag>enum <cf/bgp_origin/</tag> Origin of the route: either <cf/ORIGIN_IGP/
968 if the route has originated in an interior routing protocol or
969 <cf/ORIGIN_EGP/ if it's been imported from the <tt>EGP</tt> protocol
970 (nowadays it seems to be obsolete) or <cf/ORIGIN_INCOMPLETE/ if the origin
971 is unknown.
972
973 <tag>ip <cf/bgp_next_hop/</tag> Next hop to be used for forwarding of packets
974 to this destination. On internal BGP connections, it's an address of the
975 originating router if it's inside the local AS or a boundary router the
976 packet will leave the AS through if it's an exterior route, so each BGP
977 speaker within the AS has a chance to use the shortest interior path
978 possible to this point.
979
980 <tag>void <cf/bgp_atomic_aggr/ [O]</tag> This is an optional attribute
981 which carries no value, but the sole presence of which indicates that the route
982 has been aggregated from multiple routes by some router on the path from
983 the originator.
984
985 <!-- we don't handle aggregators right since they are of a very obscure type
986 <tag>bgp_aggregator</tag>
987 -->
988 <tag>clist <cf/bgp_community/ [O]</tag> List of community values associated
989 with the route. Each such value is a pair (represented as a <cf/pair/ data
990 type inside the filters) of 16-bit integers, the first of them containing the number of the AS which defines
991 the community and the second one being a per-AS identifier. There are lots
992 of uses of the community mechanism, but generally they are used to carry
993 policy information like "don't export to USA peers". As each AS can define
994 its own routing policy, it also has a complete freedom about which community
995 attributes it defines and what will their semantics be.
996 </descrip>
997
998 <sect1>Example
999
1000 <p><code>
1001 protocol bgp {
1002 local as 65000; # Use a private AS number
1003 neighbor 62.168.0.130 as 5588; # Our neighbor ...
1004 multihop 20 via 62.168.0.13; # ... which is connected indirectly
1005 export filter { # We use non-trivial export rules
1006 if source = RTS_STATIC then { # Export only static routes
1007 # Assign our community
1008 bgp_community.add((65000,5678));
1009 # Artificially increase path length
1010 # by advertising local AS number twice
1011 if bgp_path ~ [= 65000 =] then
1012 bgp_path.prepend(65000);
1013 accept;
1014 }
1015 reject;
1016 };
1017 import all;
1018 source address 62.168.0.1; # Use a non-standard source address
1019 }
1020 </code>
1021
1022 <sect>Device
1023
1024 <p>The Device protocol is not a real routing protocol. It doesn't generate
1025 any routes and it only serves as a module for getting information about network
1026 interfaces from the kernel.
1027
1028 <p>Except for very unusual circumstances, you probably should include
1029 this protocol in the configuration since almost all other protocols
1030 require network interfaces to be defined for them to work with.
1031
1032 <p>The only configurable thing is interface scan time:
1033
1034 <p><descrip>
1035 <tag>scan time <m/number/</tag> Time in seconds between two scans
1036 of the network interface list. On systems where we are notified about
1037 interface status changes asynchronously (such as newer versions of
1038 Linux), we need to scan the list only in order to avoid confusion by lost
1039 notification messages, so the default time is set to a large value.
1040 </descrip>
1041
1042 <p>As the Device protocol doesn't generate any routes, it cannot have
1043 any attributes. Example configuration looks really simple:
1044
1045 <p><code>
1046 protocol device {
1047 scan time 10; # Scan the interfaces often
1048 }
1049 </code>
1050
1051 <sect>Direct
1052
1053 <p>The Direct protocol is a simple generator of device routes for all the
1054 directly connected networks according to the list of interfaces provided
1055 by the kernel via the Device protocol.
1056
1057 <p>It's highly recommended to include this protocol in your configuration
1058 unless you want to use BIRD as a route server or a route reflector, that is
1059 on a machine which doesn't forward packets itself and only participates in
1060 distribution of routing information.
1061
1062 <p>The only configurable thing about direct is what interfaces it watches:
1063
1064 <p><descrip>
1065 <tag>interface <m/pattern [, ...]/</tag> By default, the Direct
1066 protocol will generate device routes for all the interfaces
1067 available. If you want to restrict it to some subset of interfaces
1068 (for example if you're using multiple routing tables for policy
1069 routing and some of the policy domains don't contain all interfaces),
1070 just use this clause.
1071 </descrip>
1072
1073 <p>Direct device routes don't contain any specific attributes.
1074
1075 <p>Example config might look like this:
1076
1077 <p><code>
1078 protocol direct {
1079 interface "-arc*", "*"; # Exclude the ARCnets
1080 }
1081 </code>
1082
1083 <sect>Kernel
1084
1085 <p>The Kernel protocol is not a real routing protocol. Instead of communicating
1086 the with other routers in the network, it performs synchronization of BIRD's routing
1087 tables with the OS kernel. Basically, it sends all routing table updates to the kernel
1088 and from time to time it scans the kernel tables to see whether some routes have
1089 disappeared (for example due to unnoticed up/down transition of an interface)
1090 or whether an `alien' route has been added by someone else (depending on the
1091 <cf/learn/ switch, such routes are either deleted or accepted to our
1092 table).
1093
1094 <p>If your OS supports only a single routing table, you can configure only one
1095 instance of the Kernel protocol. If it supports multiple tables (in order to
1096 allow policy routing; such an OS is for example Linux 2.2), you can run as many instances as you want, but each of
1097 them must be connected to a different BIRD routing table and to a different
1098 kernel table.
1099
1100 <sect1>Configuration
1101
1102 <p><descrip>
1103 <tag>persist <m/switch/</tag> Tell BIRD to leave all its routes in the
1104 routing tables when it exits (instead of cleaning them up).
1105 <tag>scan time <m/number/</tag> Time in seconds between two consecutive scans of the
1106 kernel routing table.
1107 <tag>learn <m/switch/</tag> Enable learning of routes added to the kernel
1108 routing tables by other routing daemons or by the system administrator.
1109 This is possible only on systems which support identification of route
1110 authorship.
1111 <tag>kernel table <m/number/</tag> Select which kernel table should
1112 this particular instance of the Kernel protocol work with. Available
1113 only on systems supporting multiple routing tables.
1114 </descrip>
1115
1116 <p>The Kernel protocol doesn't define any route attributes.
1117 <p>A simple configuration can look this way:
1118
1119 <p><code>
1120 protocol kernel {
1121 import all;
1122 export all;
1123 }
1124 </code>
1125
1126 <p>Or for a system with two routing tables:
1127
1128 <p><code>
1129 protocol kernel { # Primary routing table
1130 learn; # Learn alien routes from the kernel
1131 persist; # Don't remove routes on bird shutdown
1132 scan time 10; # Scan kernel routing table every 10 seconds
1133 import all;
1134 export all;
1135 }
1136
1137 protocol kernel { # Secondary routing table
1138 table auxtable;
1139 kernel table 100;
1140 export all;
1141 }
1142 </code>
1143
1144 <sect>OSPF
1145
1146 <sect1>Introduction
1147
1148 <p>Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a quite complex interior gateway
1149 protocol. The current IPv4 version (OSPFv2) is defined
1150 in RFC 2328<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2328.txt">. It's a link
1151 state (a.k.a. shortest path first) protocol -- each router maintains a database
1152 describing the autonomous system's topology. Each participating router
1153 has an identical copy of the database and all routers run the same algorithm
1154 calculating a shortest path tree with themselves as a root.
1155 OSPF chooses the least cost path as the best path.
1156 (OSPFv3 - OSPF for IPv6 is not supported yet.)
1157
1158 <p>In OSPF, the autonomous system can be split to several areas in order
1159 to reduce the amount of resources consumed for exchanging the routing
1160 information and to protect the other areas from incorrect routing data.
1161 Topology of the area is hidden to the rest of the autonomous system.
1162
1163 <p>Another very important feature of OSPF is that
1164 it can keep routing information from other protocols (like Static or BGP)
1165 in its link state database as external routes. Each external route can
1166 be tagged by the advertising router, making it possible to pass additional
1167 information between routers on the boundary of the autonomous system.
1168
1169 <p>OSPF quickly detects topological changes in the autonomous system (such
1170 as router interface failures) and calculates new loop-free routes after a short
1171 period of convergence. Only a minimal amount of
1172 routing traffic is involved.
1173
1174 <p>Each router participating in OSPF routing periodically sends Hello messages
1175 to all its interfaces. This allows neighbors to be discovered dynamically.
1176 Then the neighbors exchange theirs parts of the link state database and keep it
1177 identical by flooding updates. The flooding process is reliable and ensures
1178 that each router detects all changes.
1179
1180 <sect1>Configuration
1181
1182 <p>In the main part of configuration, there can be multiple definitions of
1183 OSPF area witch different id included. These definitions includes many other
1184 switches and multiple definitions of interfaces. Definition of interface
1185 may contain many switches and constant definitions and list of neighbors
1186 on nonbroadcast networks.
1187
1188 <code>
1189 protocol ospf &lt;name&gt; {
1190 rfc1583compat &lt;switch&gt;;
1191 tick &lt;num&gt;;
1192 area &lt;id&gt; {
1193 stub cost &lt;num&gt;;
1194 networks {
1195 &lt;prefix&gt;;
1196 &lt;prefix&gt; hidden;
1197 }
1198 stubnet &lt;prefix&gt;;
1199 stubnet &lt;prefix&gt; {
1200 hidden &lt;switch&gt;;
1201 summary &lt;switch&gt;;
1202 cost &lt;num&gt;;
1203 }
1204 interface &lt;interface pattern&gt; {
1205 cost &lt;num&gt;;
1206 stub &lt;switch&gt;;
1207 hello &lt;num&gt;;
1208 poll &lt;num&gt;;
1209 retransmit &lt;num&gt;;
1210 priority &lt;num&gt;;
1211 wait &lt;num&gt;;
1212 dead count &lt;num&gt;;
1213 dead &lt;num&gt;;
1214 rx buffer [normal|large|&lt;num&gt;];
1215 type [broadcast|nonbroadcast|pointopoint];
1216 strict nonbroadcast &lt;switch&gt;;
1217 authentication [none|simple|cryptographics];
1218 password "&lt;text&gt;";
1219 password "&lt;text&gt;" {
1220 id &lt;num&gt;;
1221 generate from "&lt;date&gt;";
1222 generate to "&lt;date&gt;";
1223 accept from "&lt;date&gt;";
1224 accept to "&lt;date&gt;";
1225 };
1226 neighbors {
1227 &lt;ip&gt;;
1228 &lt;ip&gt; eligible;
1229 };
1230 };
1231 virtual link &lt;id&gt; {
1232 hello &lt;num&gt;;
1233 retransmit &lt;num&gt;;
1234 wait &lt;num&gt;;
1235 dead count &lt;num&gt;;
1236 dead &lt;num&gt;;
1237 authentication [none|simple];
1238 password "&lt;text&gt;";
1239 };
1240 };
1241 }
1242 </code>
1243
1244 <descrip>
1245 <tag>rfc1583compat <M>switch</M></tag>
1246 This option controls compatibility of routing table
1247 calculation with RFC 1583<htmlurl
1248 url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1583.txt">. Default
1249 value is no.
1250
1251 <tag>area <M>id</M></tag>
1252 This defines an OSPF area with given area ID (an integer or an IPv4
1253 address, similarly to a router ID).
1254 The most important area is
1255 the backbone (ID 0) to which every other area must be connected.
1256
1257 <tag>stub cost <M>num</M></tag>
1258 No external (except default) routes are flooded into stub areas.
1259 Setting this value marks area stub with defined cost of default route.
1260 Default value is no. (Area is not stub.)
1261
1262 <tag>tick <M>num</M></tag>
1263 The routing table calculation and clean-up of areas' databases
1264 is not performed when a single link state
1265 change arrives. To lower the CPU utilization, it's processed later
1266 at periodical intervals of <m/num/ seconds. The default value is 1.
1267
1268 <tag>networks { <m/set/ }</tag>
1269 Definition of area IP ranges. This is used in summary lsa origination.
1270 Hidden networks are not propagated into other areas.
1271
1272 <tag>stubnet <m/prefix/ { <m/options/ }</tag>
1273 Stub networks are networks that are not transit networks
1274 between OSPF routers. They are also propagated through an
1275 OSPF area as a part of a link state database. By default,
1276 BIRD generates a stub network record for each primary network
1277 address on each OSPF interface that does not have any OSPF
1278 neighbors, and also for each non-primary network address on
1279 each OSPF interface. This option allows to alter a set of
1280 stub networks propagated by this router.
1281
1282 Each instance of this option adds a stub network with given
1283 network prefix to the set of propagated stub network, unless
1284 option <cf/hidden/ is used. It also suppresses default stub
1285 networks for given network prefix. When option
1286 <cf/summary/ is used, also default stub networks that are
1287 subnetworks of given stub network are suppressed. This might
1288 be used, for example, to aggregate generated stub networks.
1289
1290 <tag>interface <M>pattern</M></tag>
1291 Defines that the specified interfaces belong to the area being defined.
1292 See <ref id="dsc-iface" name="interface"> common option for detailed description.
1293
1294 <tag>virtual link <M>id</M></tag>
1295 Virtual link to router with the router id. Virtual link acts as a
1296 point-to-point interface belonging to backbone. The actual area is
1297 used as transport area. This item cannot be in the backbone.
1298
1299 <tag>cost <M>num</M></tag>
1300 Specifies output cost (metric) of an interface. Default value is 10.
1301
1302 <tag>stub <M>switch</M></tag>
1303 If set to interface it does not listen to any packet and does not send
1304 any hello. Default value is no.
1305
1306 <tag>hello <M>num</M></tag>
1307 Specifies interval in seconds between sending of Hello messages. Beware, all
1308 routers on the same network need to have the same hello interval.
1309 Default value is 10.
1310
1311 <tag>poll <M>num</M></tag>
1312 Specifies interval in seconds between sending of Hello messages for
1313 some neighbors on NBMA network. Default value is 20.
1314
1315 <tag>retransmit <M>num</M></tag>
1316 Specifies interval in seconds between retransmissions of unacknowledged updates.
1317 Default value is 5.
1318
1319 <tag>priority <M>num</M></tag>
1320 On every multiple access network (e.g., the Ethernet) Designed Router
1321 and Backup Designed router are elected. These routers have some
1322 special functions in the flooding process. Higher priority increases
1323 preferences in this election. Routers with priority 0 are not
1324 eligible. Default value is 1.
1325
1326 <tag>wait <M>num</M></tag>
1327 After start, router waits for the specified number of seconds between starting
1328 election and building adjacency. Default value is 40.
1329
1330 <tag>dead count <M>num</M></tag>
1331 When the router does not receive any messages from a neighbor in
1332 <m/dead count/*<m/hello/ seconds, it will consider the neighbor down.
1333
1334 <tag>dead <M>num</M></tag>
1335 When the router does not receive any messages from a neighbor in
1336 <m/dead/ seconds, it will consider the neighbor down. If both directives
1337 <m/dead count/ and <m/dead/ are used, <m/dead/ has precendence.
1338
1339 <tag>rx buffer <M>num</M></tag>
1340 This sets the size of buffer used for receiving packets. The buffer should
1341 be bigger than maximal size of any packets. Value NORMAL (default)
1342 means 2*MTU, value LARGE means maximal allowed packet - 65536.
1343
1344 <tag>type broadcast</tag>
1345 BIRD detects a type of a connected network automatically, but sometimes it's
1346 convenient to force use of a different type manually.
1347 On broadcast networks, flooding and Hello messages are sent using multicasts
1348 (a single packet for all the neighbors).
1349
1350 <tag>type pointopoint</tag>
1351 Point-to-point networks connect just 2 routers together. No election
1352 is performed there which reduces the number of messages sent.
1353
1354 <tag>type nonbroadcast</tag>
1355 On nonbroadcast networks, the packets are sent to each neighbor
1356 separately because of lack of multicast capabilities.
1357
1358 <tag>strict nonbroadcast <M>switch</M></tag>
1359 If set, don't send hello to any undefined neighbor. This switch
1360 is ignored on on any non-NBMA network. Default is No.
1361
1362 <tag>authentication none</tag>
1363 No passwords are sent in OSPF packets. This is the default value.
1364
1365 <tag>authentication simple</tag>
1366 Every packet carries 8 bytes of password. Received packets
1367 lacking this password are ignored. This authentication mechanism is
1368 very weak.
1369
1370 <tag>authentication cryptographic</tag>
1371 16-byte long MD5 digest is appended to every packet. For the digest
1372 generation 16-byte long passwords are used. Those passwords are
1373 not sent via network, so this mechanismus is quite secure.
1374 Packets can still be read by an attacker.
1375
1376 <tag>password "<M>text</M>"</tag>
1377 An 8-byte or 16-byte password used for authentication.
1378 See <ref id="dsc-pass" name="password"> common option for detailed description.
1379
1380 <tag>neighbors { <m/set/ } </tag>
1381 A set of neighbors to which Hello messages on nonbroadcast networks
1382 are to be sent. Some of them could be marked as eligible.
1383
1384 </descrip>
1385
1386 <sect1>Attributes
1387
1388 <p>OSPF defines three route attributes. Each internal route has a <cf/metric/
1389 Metric is ranging from 1 to infinity (65535).
1390 External routes use <cf/metric type 1/ or <cf/metric type 2/.
1391 A <cf/metric of type 1/ is comparable with internal <cf/metric/, a
1392 <cf/metric of type 2/ is always longer
1393 than any <cf/metric of type 1/ or any <cf/internal metric/.
1394 If you specify both metrics only metric1 is used.
1395 Each external route can also carry a <cf/tag/ which is a 32-bit
1396 integer which is used when exporting routes to other protocols;
1397 otherwise, it doesn't affect routing inside the OSPF domain at all.
1398 Default is <cf/metric of type 2 = 10000/ and <cf/tag = 0/.
1399
1400 <sect1>Example
1401
1402 <p>
1403
1404 <code>
1405 protocol ospf MyOSPF {
1406 rfc1583compatibility yes;
1407 tick 2;
1408 export filter {
1409 if source = RTS_BGP then {
1410 ospf_metric1 = 100;
1411 accept;
1412 }
1413 reject;
1414 };
1415 area 0.0.0.0 {
1416 interface "eth*" {
1417 cost 11;
1418 hello 15;
1419 priority 100;
1420 retransmit 7;
1421 authentication simple;
1422 password "aaa";
1423 };
1424 interface "ppp*" {
1425 cost 100;
1426 authentication cryptographic;
1427 password "abc" {
1428 id 1;
1429 generate to "22-04-2003 11:00:06";
1430 accept from "17-01-2001 12:01:05";
1431 };
1432 password "def" {
1433 id 2;
1434 generate to "22-07-2005 17:03:21";
1435 accept from "22-02-2001 11:34:06";
1436 };
1437 };
1438 interface "arc0" {
1439 cost 10;
1440 stub yes;
1441 };
1442 interface "arc1";
1443 };
1444 area 120 {
1445 stub yes;
1446 networks {
1447 172.16.1.0/24;
1448 172.16.2.0/24 hidden;
1449 }
1450 interface "-arc0" , "arc*" {
1451 type nonbroadcast;
1452 authentication none;
1453 strict nonbroadcast yes;
1454 wait 120;
1455 poll 40;
1456 dead count 8;
1457 neighbors {
1458 192.168.120.1 eligible;
1459 192.168.120.2;
1460 192.168.120.10;
1461 };
1462 };
1463 };
1464 }
1465 </code>
1466
1467 <sect>Pipe
1468
1469 <sect1>Introduction
1470
1471 <p>The Pipe protocol serves as a link between two routing tables, allowing routes to be
1472 passed from a table declared as primary (i.e., the one the pipe is connected to using the
1473 <cf/table/ configuration keyword) to the secondary one (declared using <cf/peer table/)
1474 and vice versa, depending on what's allowed by the filters. Export filters control export
1475 of routes from the primary table to the secondary one, import filters control the opposite
1476 direction.
1477
1478 <p>The Pipe protocol may work in the opaque mode or in the transparent
1479 mode. In the opaque mode, the Pipe protocol retransmits optimal route
1480 from one table to the other table in a similar way like other
1481 protocols send and receive routes. Retransmitted route will have the
1482 source set to the Pipe protocol, which may limit access to protocol
1483 specific route attributes. The opaque mode is a default mode.
1484
1485 <p>In transparent mode, the Pipe protocol retransmits all routes from
1486 one table to the other table, retaining their original source and
1487 attributes. If import and export filters are set to accept, then both
1488 tables would have the same content. The mode can be set by
1489 <tt/mode/ option.
1490
1491 <p>The primary use of multiple routing tables and the Pipe protocol is for policy routing,
1492 where handling of a single packet doesn't depend only on its destination address, but also
1493 on its source address, source interface, protocol type and other similar parameters.
1494 In many systems (Linux being a good example), the kernel allows to enforce routing policies
1495 by defining routing rules which choose one of several routing tables to be used for a packet
1496 according to its parameters. Setting of these rules is outside the scope of BIRD's work
1497 (on Linux, you can use the <tt/ip/ command), but you can create several routing tables in BIRD,
1498 connect them to the kernel ones, use filters to control which routes appear in which tables
1499 and also you can employ the Pipe protocol for exporting a selected subset of one table to
1500 another one.
1501
1502 <sect1>Configuration
1503
1504 <p><descrip>
1505 <tag>peer table <m/table/</tag> Defines secondary routing table to connect to. The
1506 primary one is selected by the <cf/table/ keyword.
1507
1508 <tag>mode opaque|transparent</tag> Specifies the mode for the pipe to work in. Default is opaque.
1509 </descrip>
1510
1511 <sect1>Attributes
1512
1513 <p>The Pipe protocol doesn't define any route attributes.
1514
1515 <sect1>Example
1516
1517 <p>Let's consider a router which serves as a boundary router of two different autonomous
1518 systems, each of them connected to a subset of interfaces of the router, having its own
1519 exterior connectivity and wishing to use the other AS as a backup connectivity in case
1520 of outage of its own exterior line.
1521
1522 <p>Probably the simplest solution to this situation is to use two routing tables (we'll
1523 call them <cf/as1/ and <cf/as2/) and set up kernel routing rules, so that packets having
1524 arrived from interfaces belonging to the first AS will be routed according to <cf/as1/
1525 and similarly for the second AS. Thus we have split our router to two logical routers,
1526 each one acting on its own routing table, having its own routing protocols on its own
1527 interfaces. In order to use the other AS's routes for backup purposes, we can pass
1528 the routes between the tables through a Pipe protocol while decreasing their preferences
1529 and correcting their BGP paths to reflect the AS boundary crossing.
1530
1531 <code>
1532 table as1; # Define the tables
1533 table as2;
1534
1535 protocol kernel kern1 { # Synchronize them with the kernel
1536 table as1;
1537 kernel table 1;
1538 }
1539
1540 protocol kernel kern2 {
1541 table as2;
1542 kernel table 2;
1543 }
1544
1545 protocol bgp bgp1 { # The outside connections
1546 table as1;
1547 local as 1;
1548 neighbor 192.168.0.1 as 1001;
1549 export all;
1550 import all;
1551 }
1552
1553 protocol bgp bgp2 {
1554 table as2;
1555 local as 2;
1556 neighbor 10.0.0.1 as 1002;
1557 export all;
1558 import all;
1559 }
1560
1561 protocol pipe { # The Pipe
1562 table as1;
1563 peer table as2;
1564 export filter {
1565 if net ~ [ 1.0.0.0/8+] then { # Only AS1 networks
1566 if preference>10 then preference = preference-10;
1567 if source=RTS_BGP then bgp_path.prepend(1);
1568 accept;
1569 }
1570 reject;
1571 };
1572 import filter {
1573 if net ~ [ 2.0.0.0/8+] then { # Only AS2 networks
1574 if preference>10 then preference = preference-10;
1575 if source=RTS_BGP then bgp_path.prepend(2);
1576 accept;
1577 }
1578 reject;
1579 };
1580 }
1581 </code>
1582
1583 <sect>RIP
1584
1585 <sect1>Introduction
1586
1587 <p>The RIP protocol (also sometimes called Rest In Pieces) is a simple protocol, where each router broadcasts (to all its neighbors)
1588 distances to all networks it can reach. When a router hears distance to another network, it increments
1589 it and broadcasts it back. Broadcasts are done in regular intervals. Therefore, if some network goes
1590 unreachable, routers keep telling each other that its distance is the original distance plus 1 (actually, plus
1591 interface metric, which is usually one). After some time, the distance reaches infinity (that's 15 in
1592 RIP) and all routers know that network is unreachable. RIP tries to minimize situations where
1593 counting to infinity is necessary, because it is slow. Due to infinity being 16, you can't use
1594 RIP on networks where maximal distance is higher than 15 hosts. You can read more about RIP at <HTMLURL
1595 URL="http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/rip-charter.html" name="http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/rip-charter.html">. Both IPv4
1596 (RFC 1723<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1723.txt">)
1597 and IPv6 (RFC 2080<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2080.txt">) versions of RIP are supported by BIRD, historical RIPv1 (RFC 1058<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1058.txt">)is
1598 not currently supported. RIPv4 MD5 authentication (RFC 2082<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2082.txt">) is supported.
1599
1600 <p>RIP is a very simple protocol, and it has a lot of shortcomings. Slow
1601 convergence, big network load and inability to handle larger networks
1602 makes it pretty much obsolete in IPv4 world. (It is still usable on
1603 very small networks.) It is widely used in IPv6 networks,
1604 because there are no good implementations of OSPFv3.
1605
1606 <sect1>Configuration
1607
1608 <p>In addition to options common for all to other protocols, RIP supports the following ones:
1609
1610 <descrip>
1611 <tag/authentication none|plaintext|md5/ selects authentication method to be used. <cf/none/ means that
1612 packets are not authenticated at all, <cf/plaintext/ means that a plaintext password is embedded
1613 into each packet, and <cf/md5/ means that packets are authenticated using a MD5 cryptographic
1614 hash. If you set authentication to not-none, it is a good idea to add <cf>password</cf>
1615 section. Default: none.
1616
1617 <tag>honor always|neighbor|never </tag>specifies when should requests for dumping routing table
1618 be honored. (Always, when sent from a host on a directly connected
1619 network or never.) Routing table updates are honored only from
1620 neighbors, that is not configurable. Default: never.
1621 </descrip>
1622
1623 <p>There are two options that can be specified per-interface. First is <cf>metric</cf>, with
1624 default one. Second is <cf>mode multicast|broadcast|quiet|nolisten|version1</cf>, it selects mode for
1625 rip to work in. If nothing is specified, rip runs in multicast mode. <cf>version1</cf> is
1626 currently equivalent to <cf>broadcast</cf>, and it makes RIP talk to a broadcast address even
1627 through multicast mode is possible. <cf>quiet</cf> option means that RIP will not transmit
1628 any periodic messages to this interface and <cf>nolisten</cf> means that RIP will send to this
1629 interface but not listen to it.
1630
1631 <p>The following options generally override behavior specified in RFC. If you use any of these
1632 options, BIRD will no longer be RFC-compliant, which means it will not be able to talk to anything
1633 other than equally configured BIRD. I have warned you.
1634
1635 <descrip>
1636 <tag>port <M>number</M></tag>
1637 selects IP port to operate on, default 520. (This is useful when testing BIRD, if you
1638 set this to an address &gt;1024, you will not need to run bird with UID==0).
1639
1640 <tag>infinity <M>number</M></tag>
1641 selects the value of infinity, default is 16. Bigger values will make protocol convergence
1642 even slower.
1643
1644 <tag>period <M>number</M>
1645 </tag>specifies the number of seconds between periodic updates. Default is 30 seconds. A lower
1646 number will mean faster convergence but bigger network
1647 load. Do not use values lower than 10.
1648
1649 <tag>timeout time <M>number</M>
1650 </tag>specifies how old route has to be to be considered unreachable. Default is 4*<cf/period/.
1651
1652 <tag>garbage time <M>number</M>
1653 </tag>specifies how old route has to be to be discarded. Default is 10*<cf/period/.
1654 </descrip>
1655
1656 <sect1>Attributes
1657
1658 <p>RIP defines two route attributes:
1659
1660 <descrip>
1661 <tag>int <cf/rip_metric/</tag> RIP metric of the route (ranging from 0 to <cf/infinity/).
1662 When routes from different RIP instances are available and all of them have the same
1663 preference, BIRD prefers the route with lowest <cf/rip_metric/.
1664 When importing a non-RIP route, the metric defaults to 5.
1665
1666 <tag>int <cf/rip_tag/</tag> RIP route tag: a 16-bit number which can be used
1667 to carry additional information with the route (for example, an originating AS number
1668 in case of external routes). When importing a non-RIP route, the tag defaults to 0.
1669 </descrip>
1670
1671 <sect1>Example
1672
1673 <p><code>
1674 protocol rip MyRIP_test {
1675 debug all;
1676 port 1520;
1677 period 10;
1678 garbage time 60;
1679 interface "eth0" { metric 3; mode multicast; };
1680 interface "eth*" { metric 2; mode broadcast; };
1681 honor neighbor;
1682 authentication none;
1683 import filter { print "importing"; accept; };
1684 export filter { print "exporting"; accept; };
1685 }
1686 </code>
1687
1688 <sect>Static
1689
1690 <p>The Static protocol doesn't communicate with other routers in the network,
1691 but instead it allows you to define routes manually. This is often used for
1692 specifying how to forward packets to parts of the network which don't use
1693 dynamic routing at all and also for defining sink routes (i.e., those
1694 telling to return packets as undeliverable if they are in your IP block,
1695 you don't have any specific destination for them and you don't want to send
1696 them out through the default route to prevent routing loops).
1697
1698 <p>There are three types of static routes: `classical' routes telling to
1699 forward packets to a neighboring router, device routes specifying forwarding
1700 to hosts on a directly connected network and special routes (sink, blackhole
1701 etc.) which specify a special action to be done instead of forwarding the
1702 packet.
1703
1704 <p>When the particular destination is not available (the interface is down or
1705 the next hop of the route is not a neighbor at the moment), Static just
1706 uninstalls the route from the table it is connected to and adds it again as soon
1707 as the destination becomes adjacent again.
1708
1709 <p>The Static protocol has no configuration options. Instead, the
1710 definition of the protocol contains a list of static routes:
1711
1712 <descrip>
1713 <tag>route <m/prefix/ via <m/ip/</tag> Static route through
1714 a neighboring router.
1715 <tag>route <m/prefix/ via <m/"interface"/</tag> Static device
1716 route through an interface to hosts on a directly connected network.
1717 <tag>route <m/prefix/ drop|reject|prohibit</tag> Special routes
1718 specifying to drop the packet, return it as unreachable or return
1719 it as administratively prohibited.
1720 </descrip>
1721
1722 <p>Static routes have no specific attributes.
1723
1724 <p>Example static config might look like this:
1725
1726 <p><code>
1727 protocol static {
1728 table testable; # Connect to a non-default routing table
1729 route 0.0.0.0/0 via 62.168.0.13; # Default route
1730 route 62.168.0.0/25 reject; # Sink route
1731 route 10.2.0.0/24 via "arc0"; # Secondary network
1732 }
1733 </code>
1734
1735 <chapt>Conclusions
1736
1737 <sect>Future work
1738
1739 <p>Although BIRD supports all the commonly used routing protocols,
1740 there are still some features which would surely deserve to be
1741 implemented in future versions of BIRD:
1742
1743 <itemize>
1744 <item>OSPF for IPv6 networks
1745 <item>OSPF NSSA areas and opaque LSA's
1746 <item>Route aggregation and flap dampening
1747 <item>Generation of IPv6 router advertisements
1748 <item>Multipath routes
1749 <item>Multicast routing protocols
1750 <item>Ports to other systems
1751 </itemize>
1752
1753 <sect>Getting more help
1754
1755 <p>If you use BIRD, you're welcome to join the bird-users mailing list
1756 (<HTMLURL URL="mailto:bird-users@bird.network.cz" name="bird-users@bird.network.cz">)
1757 where you can share your experiences with the other users and consult
1758 your problems with the authors. To subscribe to the list, just send a
1759 <tt/subscribe bird-users/ command in a body of a mail to
1760 (<HTMLURL URL="mailto:majordomo@bird.network.cz" name="majordomo@bird.network.cz">).
1761 The home page of BIRD can be found at <HTMLURL URL="http://bird.network.cz/" name="http://bird.network.cz/">.
1762
1763 <p>BIRD is a relatively young system and it probably contains some
1764 bugs. You can report any problems to the bird-users list and the authors
1765 will be glad to solve them, but before you do so,
1766 please make sure you have read the available documentation and that you are running the latest version (available at <HTMLURL
1767 URL="ftp://bird.network.cz/pub/bird" name="bird.network.cz:/pub/bird">). (Of course, a patch
1768 which fixes the bug is always welcome as an attachment.)
1769
1770 <p>If you want to understand what is going inside, Internet standards are
1771 a good and interesting reading. You can get them from <HTMLURL URL="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/" name="ftp.rfc-editor.org"> (or a nicely sorted version from <HTMLURL URL="ftp://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/pub/rfc" name="atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz:/pub/rfc">).
1772
1773 <p><it/Good luck!/
1774
1775 </book>
1776
1777 <!--
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