# Project roadmap
-## Planned for 2023
+## Planned for 2025
-### SNMP AgentX plugin for BIRD status export
-Allow for easier status monitoring.
+*Not decided yet.*
-### BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP)
-BGP Monitoring Protocol (RFC 7854) is a protocol between a BGP speaker and
-a monitoring node, which is notified about route updates and neighbor state
-changes of the BGP speaker.
+## Expected features
-### Better coverage of automatic tests
-Functionality tests should cover more possible configurations and
-combinations. Integration tests should run automatically between different OS
-versions and HW architectures. Experimental support for performance regression tests.
+*The order of these items is not significant.*
-### Release 3.0-alpha1
-Missing: MRT, merging
+### EVPN / VXLAN extensions
+There is an out-of-tree branch which we intend to continue work on and
+eventually merge.
-### Show BFD sessions details
-CLI command showing detailed information about BFD sessions state
+### Enhanced command-line interface
+Most other vendors allow for updating the configuration from the command-line.
+There is quite some demand to allow this with BIRD. Needs quite some refactoring
+before possible.
-### Review and merge Babel extended next hop patches (RFC 9229)
-Babel extension to allow IPv4 routes with IPv6 next hop. Patch on mailing list.
+### SNMP AgentX plugin for BIRD status export
+Allow for easier status monitoring.
-### Consolidate protocol statistics
-Consolidate protocol statistics, make them useful for SNMP plugin and implement
-'show XX stats' command.
+### BGP Optimal Route Reflection (RFC 9107)
+Implement BGP best route selection on route reflectors to adhere to POV of
+client, not RR. Also requested by somebody, don't remember who and when.
-### TCP-AO if it appears in Linux and BSD upstream
-Resolve whether we should or shouldn't control the kernel key management.
-Design and implement our side for both Linux and BSD.
+### OSPF Traffic engineering extensions (RFC 3630)
+Requested in list. May include lots of other RFC's as we have neglected this
+feature for a long time.
+http://trubka.network.cz/pipermail/bird-users/2022-January/015911.html
-### Conditional routes (v3)
-Filters should be extended to allow conditional expressions based on a number of
-matching routes in a routing table. This would allow to specify aggregate routes
-using a static protocol and conditions like 'if there is at least 1000 routes
-from this BGP protocol, accept this default route'. This feature comes handy
-when a router needs to detect whether its BGP upstream is alive and working.
-Based of number of routes received, the router can then announce or retract a
-default route to OSPF, making multi-exit network routing simpler and more
-effective.
+### BGP minimum route advertisement interval (MRAI)
+BGP specifies minimum interval between route advertisements for the same
+network. This is not implemented in BIRD. It should be implemented for 3.0 to
+avoid unnecessary re-routing spikes.
-### Aggregating routes
-Requested by customer: aggregating multiple routes by a common set of attributes.
+### OSPF unnumbered interfaces
+The OSPFv2 protocol allows interfaces that do not have proper IP range but have
+peer IP addresses (like PtP links). It should be extended to also allow true
+unnumbered interfaces with no addresses (by using an IP address from some
+loopback device). This would require to have stricter separation between IP
+addresses and interfaces in OSPFv2.
-Implementation choice: the user specifies
+### OSPF Segment Routing Extension (RFC 8665)
+MPLS label distribution using segment routing and simple OSPF extension.
- EXPORT filter before aggregation AGGREGATE ON list of expressions to compare MERGE what to do with the remaining attributes
+### MPLS Label Distribution Protocol (LDP)
+Label Distribution Protocol (RFC 5036) is a protocol for establishing
+label-switched paths and distributing of MPLS labels between MPLS routers.
+These paths and labels are based on existing unlabeled routing information.
-Example usage:
+### SRv6 support (RFC 8986)
+Segment Routing over IPv6, SID assignments, Linux kernel support.
-* aggregating information from multiple internal BGP routes into one external
-* creating a multipath route from multiple BGP routes (currently done by MERGE PATHS)
-* (in future) computing a minimal route set for kernel to make forwarding faster instead of writing the received full BGP set there
+### Seamless BFD
+New version of BFD negotiation defined in RFC 7880-7886 enables faster
+continuity tests by dissemination discriminators by the governing protocols.
-### PREF64 option in RA (RFC 8781)
-Inform hosts about prefix used to synthesize NAT64 addresses. Requested in list:
-http://trubka.network.cz/pipermail/bird-users/2022-November/016401.html
+### OSPF Graceful Link Shutdown
+To enable seamless maintenance of single links, OSPF can advertise such a link
+getting down in advance, allowing to re-route. Defined in RFC 8379.
-### Logging via UDP
-Got a patch, probably never merged. May be useful.
-http://trubka.network.cz/pipermail/bird-users/2022-January/015893.html
+### IS-IS
+IS-IS routing protocol is a nice-to-have alternative to OSPF.
-### BGP Tunnel Encapsulation Attribute (RFC 9012)
-Packets sent to BGP next hop may be encapsulated using various tunnel
-technologies. Useful for L3VPN.
+### BGPsec
+BGPsec (RFC 8205) is a new path security extension to BGP.
-### BGP AS Cones and ASPA support
-Extend the RPKI protocol with AS Cones and ASPA loading. Implement AS Cones
-and ASPA validation routines. There may be some pending patches from QRator.
+### BGP Link State extension
+BGP-LS allows to transport information about network topology across BGP links.
+This should help e.g. to run traffic-engineering between more confederated ASs.
+Also needed to implement Seamless BFD on BGP: RFC 9247
+
+### VPP / DPDK direct programming support
+Module allowing to directly export routes to VPP, instead of playing ping-pong
+with Netlink. Also possibly tighter integration, depends of user needs.
+
+### Flowspec to kernel / VPP interface
+BGP Flowspec are actually firewall rules, so either nftables or direct hardware
+programming is what we need to execute them.
+
+### Flowspec attribute filtering
+Flowspec routes have many parameters, but these are not accessible from filters.
+Filters should be extended to access all these attributes, but first it is
+necessary to cleanup attribute handling in filters.
-### DHCPv6 relay agent
-DHCPv6 relay agents (RFC 8415, RFC 8987) forward DHCPv6 messages between clients and
-servers. They also ensure that prefixes delegated by DHCPv6-PD are routable,
-i.e. they should generate routes for these prefixes.
+## Refactoring and internal plans
### Nexthop attributes and ECMP filtering
Currently we have route attributes, but with ECMP routes it is necessary to
be extended to allow per-nexthop ones and filters should be extended to allow
access multiple nexthops and their attributes.
-### Performance accounting
-Extended internal statistics about time spent in different modules of BIRD. If
-the route server admin checks why it takes 15 minutes to converge, this should
-give some basic info about performance. [MM: Internally needed by 3.0, already in progress]
-
-### MPLS support
-Finalize and merge improved MPLS infrastructure (including MPLS label allocator
-and supporting code), improve its reconfiguration support and support for
-segment routing.
-
-### BGP Segment Routing Extension (RFC 8669)
-Receive and announce Segment Identifiers (SIDs) for BGP next hops.
+### OSPFv3 Extended LSAs
+Implement RFC 8362. Needed for most of the newer OSPF features.
-## Backlog for following years
-
-*The order of these items is not significant.*
-
-### Flowspec attribute filtering
-Flowspec routes have many parameters, but these are not accessible from filters.
-Filters should be extended to access all these attributes, but first it is
-necessary to cleanup attribute handling in filters.
-
-### BGP Optimal Route Reflection (RFC 9107)
-Implement BGP best route selection on route reflectors to adhere to POV of
-client, not RR. Also requested by somebody, don't remember who and when.
-
-### OSPF Traffic engineering extensions (RFC 3630)
-Requested in list. May include lots of other RFC's as we have neglected this
-feature for a long time.
-http://trubka.network.cz/pipermail/bird-users/2022-January/015911.html
+### Automatic performance testing
+Integrated perftests into CI.
### IPv6 preference in documentation (?)
Address world's reluctance of legacy IPv4 deprecation by updating the
documentation in such a way that IPv6 is preferred and first seen.
-### BGP local prefix leak prevention (?)
-Reject local prefixes on eBGP sessions by default to prevent leaks to public Internet.
-Unless explicitly enabled by config, of course.
-
-### Re-bogonization of 240/4 legacy range (?)
-We shouldn't believe that every operator does the
-filtering right and they could simply rely on pre-2.0.10 behavior which
-filtered this out by default.
-
-### IPv4 multicast
-Basic infrastructure for IPv4 multicast routing, including nettypes for
-multicast routes and multicast requests, multicast kernel protocol and IGMPv2
-protocol.
-
-### PIM-BIDIR
-Bidirectional PIM (RFC 5015) is a multicast routing protocol, variant of PIM-SM.
-It uses bidirectional shared trees rooted in Rendezvous Point (RP) to connect
-sources and receivers.
-
-There is an old branch containing this. We should have merged this years ago.
-
### Improved VRF support
BIRD has working VRF support, but it needs improvements. VRF entities should be
first-class objects with explicit configuration, with a set of properties and
protocol). But it would require to have internal object model (below) first,
as we do not want to implement it independently for each protocol attribute.
-### Mutable static routes
-Extension to the static protocol that would allow to add/remove/change static
-routes from CLI.
-
-### Multipipe
-Pipe-like protocol: When a route is exported to this protocol, it runs its
-filter extended with capability to announce any number of new routes to any
-table from one filter run. Its primary purpose is to allow user-specified
-route aggregation and other non-linear operations.
-
-### BGP minimum route advertisement interval (MRAI)
-BGP specifies minimum interval between route advertisements for the same
-network. This is not implemented in BIRD. It should be implemented for 3.0 to
-avoid unnecessary re-routing spikes.
-
-### OSPF unnumbered interfaces
-The OSPFv2 protocol allows interfaces that do not have proper IP range but have
-peer IP addresses (like PtP links). It should be extended to also allow true
-unnumbered interfaces with no addresses (by using an IP address from some
-loopback device). This would require to have stricter separation between IP
-addresses and interfaces in OSPFv2.
-
-### OSPF Segment Routing Extension (RFC 8665)
-MPLS label distribution using segment routing and simple OSPF extension.
-
-### MPLS Label Distribution Protocol (LDP)
-Label Distribution Protocol (RFC 5036) is a protocol for establishing
-label-switched paths and distributing of MPLS labels between MPLS routers.
-These paths and labels are based on existing unlabeled routing information.
-
-### IPv6 multicast
-Basic infrastructure for IPv6 multicast routing, including nettypes for
-multicast routes and multicast requests, multicast kernel protocol and MLDv1
-protocol. Most of these (with the exception of MLDv1) is just a variant of
-IPv4 multicast.
-
-### IGMP/MLD multicast proxy
-A simple IGMP/MLD multicast proxy, which sends IGMP/MLD requests on a configured
-uplink interface based on received requests on downlink interfaces, and updates
-associated multicast routes.
-
-### Source-specific multicast (SSM)
-Infrastructure for multicasts should be extended to handle source-specific
-multicasts. Extend multicast nettypes to include source addresses, handle them
-in multicast kernel protocols and implement IGMPv3/MLDv2 protocols.
-
-### PIM-SSM
-PIM-SSM is a source-specific multicast routing protocol, a subset of PIM-SM
-protocol (RFC 7761). It is restricted to source-specific multicasts, which
-eliminates many problematic parts of PIM-SM.
-
-### Seamless BFD
-New version of BFD negotiation defined in RFC 7880-7886 enables faster
-continuity tests by dissemination discriminators by the governing protocols.
-
-### OSPF Graceful Link Shutdown
-To enable seamless maintenance of single links, OSPF can advertise such a link
-getting down in advance, allowing to re-route. Defined in RFC 8379.
-
-## Long-term
+### Interface and address table rework
+The current state of two linked lists is becoming too limiting for certain use
+cases. We are looking into conversion of these tables into some faster and
+better accessible structures.
### Internal object model
We need to define explicit internal object model, where existing objects
* RFC 9254: YANG-CBOR mapping
* RFC 9277: Stable storage of CBOR (files)
-## Perhaps
+Maybe, after generic configuration model is created, this may be a CORECONF
+implementation.
-### IS-IS
-IS-IS routing protocol is a nice-to-have alternative to OSPF.
+### Netconf
+Network Configuration Protocol (RFC 6241) is a XML/JSON protocol for
+configuration management of network devices. This would be an overlay daemon
+translating between XML (Netconf) or JSON (Restconf) and CBOR (Coreconf).
-### BGPsec
-BGPsec (RFC 8205) is a new path security extension to BGP.
+## Long-term thoughts
-### PIM-SM
-PIM-SM (RFC 7761) is a prevailing multicast routing protocol, but more
-complicated than planned PIM-BIDIR and PIM-SSM.
+*We don't know whether we want this to be implemented in BIRD.*
-### Netconf
-Network Configuration Protocol (RFC 6241) is a XML/JSON protocol for
-configuration management of network devices. It would benefit from generic
-configuration model (above).
+### DHCP implementation
+Ranging from DHCPv6 relay agents (RFC 8415, RFC 8987) to ensure that prefixes
+delegated by DHCPv6-PD are routable, to actual full DHCPv6 (and DHCPv4) server
+and maybe even a client.
+
+### Configuring interfaces
+There is a long rabbit-hole of what we allow ourselves to implement considering
+the network interfaces. We have identified 4 different possible scenarios and
+not decided on any of these yet.
-### NetConf overlay
-Machine-friendly config file editor daemon (standalone) with standard NetConf
-interface on one side and BIRD config file + reconfiguration requests on the
-other side. Python3 seems to be better choice than C for this kind of work.
+0. we do nothing
+1. we implement only what we really need (e.g. creating pseudo-interfaces for VXLAN)
+2. we implement common things including interface address setting or changing its state
+3. we go full NetworkManager
-### Backend for 802.11r
-Let's assume a bunch of boxes, all having some public wifi APs and some (secure) uplinks.
-Design and implement an automatic backbone protocol to allow for simple almost-zeroconf
-setup of e.g. a conference room or train / bus public wifi or even a local home network,
-all with hostapd seamlessly transferring clients between APs via 802.11r.
-Possible collab with Turris.
+### LLDP implementation
+Autodiscovery allowing also for autoconfiguration of other protocols.
+
+### Wireguard routing support
+The internal Wireguard routing is weird and we may want to explicitly route by
+e.g. Babel in a complex network of tunnels. Or, if we decide to implement
+interface configuration, we may even create interfaces based on whatever the
+user configures.
+
+### IPv4 multicast
+Basic infrastructure for IPv4 multicast routing, including nettypes for
+multicast routes and multicast requests, multicast kernel protocol and IGMPv2
+protocol.
+
+### PIM-BIDIR
+Bidirectional PIM (RFC 5015) is a multicast routing protocol, variant of PIM-SM.
+It uses bidirectional shared trees rooted in Rendezvous Point (RP) to connect
+sources and receivers.
+
+There is an old branch containing this. We should have merged this years ago.
+
+### IPv6 multicast
+Basic infrastructure for IPv6 multicast routing, including nettypes for
+multicast routes and multicast requests, multicast kernel protocol and MLDv1
+protocol. Most of these (with the exception of MLDv1) is just a variant of
+IPv4 multicast.
+
+### IGMP/MLD multicast proxy
+A simple IGMP/MLD multicast proxy, which sends IGMP/MLD requests on a configured
+uplink interface based on received requests on downlink interfaces, and updates
+associated multicast routes.
+
+### Source-specific multicast (SSM)
+Infrastructure for multicasts should be extended to handle source-specific
+multicasts. Extend multicast nettypes to include source addresses, handle them
+in multicast kernel protocols and implement IGMPv3/MLDv2 protocols.
+
+### PIM-SSM
+PIM-SSM is a source-specific multicast routing protocol, a subset of PIM-SM
+protocol (RFC 7761). It is restricted to source-specific multicasts, which
+eliminates many problematic parts of PIM-SM.
+
+### PIM-SM
+PIM-SM (RFC 7761) is a prevailing multicast routing protocol, but more
+complicated than PIM-BIDIR and PIM-SSM.
### BFD Multipoint Connectivity
Checking whether multiple "receivers" can communicate with a single "sender".
Possibly useful after merging PIM-BIDIR and implementing other PIMs. RFC 8562-8563.
-### BGP Link State extension
-BGP-LS allows to transport information about network topology across BGP links.
-This should help e.g. to run traffic-engineering between more confederated ASs.
-Also needed to implement Seamless BFD on BGP: RFC 9247
-
-### Locator/ID Separation Protocol
-LISP intends to break up addressing to Routing Locators and Endpoint
-Identifiers. This may help multihoming networks in future. RFC 9299-9306.
+### Mutable static routes
+Extension to the static protocol that would allow to add/remove/change static
+routes from CLI.
-### Backend for IPv6 Multihoming without BGP
-Implement and configure BIRD in such a way that local nodes are seamlessly
-connected to the Internet via multiple upstreams, using Network Prefix
-Translation and other techniques. Possible collab with Turris.
+### Multipipe
+Pipe-like protocol: When a route is exported to this protocol, it runs its
+filter extended with capability to announce any number of new routes to any
+table from one filter run. Its primary purpose is to allow user-specified
+route aggregation and other non-linear operations.
## Minor
projects / thirdparty / bird.git / commitdiff
