Linux – Experiences with BIRD for BGP

bgpbirdlinuxrouter

We're currently using Quagga with Debian Linux to run a full table BGP router. The set-up has been dead simple up to now, but we've come to a point where I have to reconfigure the router quite a bit, and want to tighten things up.

I've never really understood Quagga, and always found its documentation to be lacking. It appears to be mimicking Cisco, of which I only have basic understanding.

BIRD has caught my eye recently. The couple of articles / presentations I found promote it as lightweight and more responsive under stress compared to Quagga. And it actually seems to have very decent documentation.

So I'd like to know:

  • Who's running BIRD right now, and in what kind of set-up?
  • How is it stability-wise? I've read about it running in a couple of sites in production.
  • Let's say I don't care at all for a Cisco-feel to configuration. How is configuration, maintainance, monitoring, etc. of BIRD in general?
  • And any other notable experiences you may have with it.

Best Answer

  • It seems like a few internet exchanges are running bird as route servers in their production network see here for a few examples
  • I am part of dn42(networking playground of sorts) and so far I had no problems with bird at all(unlike quagga, which burned me a few times, so it's safe to say it should work on an public production environment too.)
  • If you like editing your configuration with an proper editor or want to generate the configuration from some datasource or so(which I do), then bird is for you. If you prefer to edit your configuration via an command line interface, then not so much.
  • BIRD requires you to run a seperate daemon for IPv4 and IPv6(unlike quagga), but that's no big loss IMHO, as running IPv4 and IPv6 over the same peering is a PITA in quagga anyway.
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