BIRD User's Guide <author> Ondrej Filip <it/<feela@network.cz>/, Pavel Machek <it/<pavel@ucw.cz>/, Martin Mares <it/<mj@ucw.cz>/ </author> <abstract> This document contains user documentation for the BIRD Internet Routing Daemon project. </abstract>  <toc>  <chapt>Introduction <sect>What is BIRD <label id="intro"> The name `BIRD' is actually an acronym standing for `BIRD Internet Routing Daemon'. Let's take a closer look at the meaning of the name: <em/BIRD/: Well, we think we have already explained that. It's an acronym standing for `BIRD Internet Routing Daemon', you remember, don't you? :-) <em/Internet Routing/: It's a program (well, a daemon, as you are going to discover in a moment) which works as a dynamic router in an Internet type network (that is, in a network running either the IPv4 or the IPv6 protocol). Routers are devices which forward packets between interconnected networks in order to allow hosts not connected directly to the same local area network to communicate with each other. They also communicate with the other routers in the Internet to discover the topology of the network which allows them to find optimal (in terms of some metric) rules for forwarding of packets (which will be called routes in the rest of this document) and to adapt themselves to the changing conditions such as outages of network links, building of new connections and so on. Most of these routers are costly dedicated devices running obscure firmware which is hard to configure and 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 computer to act as a router and forward packets belonging to the other hosts, but only according to a statically configured table. A <em/Routing Daemon/ is in UNIX terminology a non-interactive program running on background which does the dynamic part of Internet routing, that is it communicates with the other routers, calculates routing tables and sends them to the OS kernel which does the actual packet forwarding. There already exist other such routing daemons: routed (rip only), GateD<HTMLURL URL="http://www.gated.org/"> (non free), Zebra<HTMLURL URL="http://www.zebra.org"> and mrtd<HTMLURL URL="http://www.zcu.cz/ftp/mirrors/mmrz/mrtd">, but their capabilities are limited and they are relatively hard to configure and maintain. BIRD is an Internet Routing Daemon designed to avoid all of these shortcomings, to support all the routing technology used in the today's Internet or planned to be used in near future and to have a clean extensible architecture allowing new routing protocols to be incorporated easily. Among other features, BIRD supports: <itemize> <item>both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols <item>multiple routing tables <item>the Border Gateway Protocol (BGPv4) <item>the Routing Interchange Protocol (RIPv2) <item>the Open Shortest Path First protocol (OSPFv2) <item>a virtual protocol for exchange of routes between different routing tables on a single host <item>a command-line interface allowing on-line control and inspection of status of the daemon <item>soft reconfiguration (no need to use complex online commands to change the configuration, just edit the configuration file and notify BIRD to re-read it and it will smoothly switch itself to the new configuration, not disturbing routing protocols unless they are affected by the configuration changes) <item>a powerful language for route filtering </itemize> BIRD has been developed at the Faculty of Math and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic as a student project. It can be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. BIRD has been designed to work on all UNIX-like systems. It has been developed and tested under Linux 2.0 to 2.4, but porting to other systems (even non-UNIX ones) should be relatively easy due to its highly modular architecture. <sect>Installing BIRD On a recent UNIX system with GNU development tools (GCC, binutils, m4, make) and Perl, installing BIRD should be as easy as: <code> ./configure make make install vi /usr/local/etc/bird.conf bird </code> You can use <tt>./configure --help</tt> to get a list of configure options. The most important ones are: <tt/--enable-ipv6/ which enables building of an IPv6 version of BIRD, <tt/--with-protocols=/ to produce a slightly smaller BIRD executable by configuring out routing protocols you don't use, and <tt/--prefix=/ to install BIRD to a place different from. <file>/usr/local</file>. <sect>Running BIRD You can pass several command-line options to bird: <descrip> <tag>-c <m/config name/</tag> use given configuration file instead of <file>$prefix/etc/bird.conf</file>. <tag>-d</tag> enable debug messages and run bird in foreground. <tag>-D <m/filename of debug log/</tag> log debugging information to given file instead of stderr <tag>-s <m/name of communication socket/</tag> use given filename for a socket for communications with the client, default is <file>$prefix/var/run/bird.ctl</file>. </descrip> BIRD writes messages about its work to log files or syslog (according to config). <chapt>About routing tables BIRD has one or more routing tables, which may or may not be synchronized with kernel and which may or may not be synchronized with each other (see the Pipe protocol). Each routing table contains list of known routes. Each route consists of: <itemize> <item>network prefix this route is for (consists of networkk address and number of bits forming the network part of the address) <item>preference of this route (taken from preference of protocol and possibly altered by filters) <item>IP address of router who told us about this route <item>IP address of router we should forward the packets to using this route <item>other attributes common to all routes <item>dynamic attributes defined by protocols which may or may not be present (typically protocol metrics) </itemize> Routing table maintains more than one entry for a network, but at most one entry for one network and one protocol. The entry with biggest preference is used for routing. If there are more entries with the same preference and they are from the same protocol, protocol decides (typically according to metrics). If not, internal ordering is used to decide. You can get list of route attributes in "Route attributes" section in filters. Protocols are connected to routing tables through filters. Routes that come from other routers go to the protocol, it then passes them to filters, if import filter accepts route, it gets to main routing table. It is then broadcasted to all other protocols (filtered through their export filters), which typically send it to other routers. Filters can alter routes passed between routing tables and protocols. <chapt>Configuration <sect>Introduction  BIRD is configured using a text configuration file. Upon startup, BIRD reads <file>$prefix/bird.conf</file> (unless the <tt/-c/ command line option is given). Configuration may be changed on user's request: if you modify config file and then signal BIRD with SIGHUP, it will adjust to the new config. Then there's the client, which allows you to talk with BIRD in an extensive way. (Of course you can tell BIRD to reconfigure from BIRDC, you can also tell it to shut down, dump various info etc.). In the config, everything on a line after <cf/#/ or inside <cf>/* */</cf> is a comment, whitespace characters are treated as a single space. If there's a variable number of options, they are grouped using the <cf/{ }/ brackets. Each option is terminated by a <cf/;/. Configuration is case sensitive. Here is an example of a simple config file. It enables synchronization of routing tables with OS kernel, scans for new network interfaces every 10 seconds and runs RIP on all network interfaces found. <code> protocol kernel { persist; # Don't remove routes on BIRD shutdown scan time 20; # Scan kernel routing table every 20 seconds export all; # Default is export none } protocol device { scan time 10; # Scan interfaces every 10 seconds } protocol rip { export all; import all; } </code> <sect>Global options <descrip> <tag>log "<m/filename/"|syslog|stderr all|{ <m/list of classes/ }</tag> Set logging of messages having the given (either <cf/all/ or <cf/{ error, trace }/ etc.) into selected destination. Classes are: <cf/info/, <cf/warning/, <cf/error/ and <cf/fatal/ for messages about local problems <cf/debug/ for debugging messages, <cf/trace/ when you want to know what happens in the network, <cf/remote/ for messages about misbehavior of remote machines, <cf/auth/ about authentication failures, <cf/bug/ for internal BIRD bugs. You may specify more than one <cf/log/ line to estabilish logging to multiple destinations.  <tag>debug protocols all|off|{ states, routes, filters, interfaces, events, packets }</tag> Set global default of protocol debugging options. <tag>filter <m/name local variables/{ <m/commands/ }</tag> Define a filter. You can learn more about filters in the following chapter. <tag>function <m/name (parameters) local variables/ { <m/commands/ }</tag> Define a function. You can learn more about functions in the following chapter. <tag>protocol rip|ospf|bgp|... <m/[name]/ { <m>protocol options</m> }</tag> Define a protocol instance called <cf><m/name/</cf> (or with a name like "rip5" generated automatically, if you don't specify <cf><m/name/</cf>). You can learn more about configuring protocols in their own chapters. You can run more than one instance of most protocols (like RIP or BGP). <tag>define <m/constant/ = (<m/expression/)|<m/number/|<m/IP address/</tag> Define a constant. You can use it later in every place you could use a simple integer or IP address. <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. <tag>table <m/name/</tag> Create a new routing table. The default routing table is created implicitly, other routing tables have to be added by this command. <tag>eval <m/expr/</tag> Evaluates given filter expression. It is used by us for testing filters. </descrip> <sect>Protocol options Each routing protocol has its own set of options (see the corresponding sections). These options are common to all protocols: <descrip> <tag>preference <m/expr/</tag> Sets the preference of routes generated by this protocol. <tag>disabled</tag> Disables the protocol. You can change the disable/enable status from the command line interface without needing to touch the configuration. Disabled protocol is not activated. <tag>debug <m/setting/</tag> Similar to global <cf/debug/ setting, except that it only affects one protocol. Only messages in selected debugging categories will be written to the logs. <tag>import { <m/filter commands/ } | <m/name/ | all | none</tag> Specify a filter to be used for filtering routes comming from protocol tothe routing table. Default: <cf/all/. <cf/all/ is shorthand for <cf/{ accept; }/ and <cf/none/ is shorthand for <cf/{ reject; }/. <tag>export <m/filter/</tag> This is similar to <cf>import</cf> keyword, except that it works in direction from the routing table to the protocol. Default: <cf/none/ <tag>table <m/name/</tag> Connect this protocol to a non-default routing table. </descrip> There are several options that give sense only with certain protocols: <descrip> <tag>passwords { password "<m/password/" from <m/time/ to <m/time/ passive <m/time/ id <m/num/ [...] }</tag> Specifies passwords to be used with this protocol. <cf>Passive <m/time/</cf> is time from which the password is not used for sending, but it is recognized on reception. <cf/id/ is password id, as needed by certain protocols. <tag>interface "<m/mask/"|<m/prefix/ [ { <m/option/ ; [ ... ] } ]</tag> Specifies which interfaces this protocol is active on, and allows you to set options on per-interface basis. Mask is specified in shell-like patterns, thus <cf>interface "*" { mode broadcast; };</cf> will start the protocol on all interfaces with <cf>mode broadcast;</cf> option. If first character of mask is <cf/-/, such interfaces are excluded. Masks are parsed left-to-right, thus <cf/interface "-eth*", "*";/ means all but the ethernets. </descrip> <sect>Client You can use the command-line client <file>birdc</file> to talk with a running BIRD. Communication is done using <file/bird.ctl/ unix domain socket (unless changed with the <tt/-s/ option given to both the server and the client). The client can do simple actions such as enabling/disabling protocols, telling BIRD to show various information, telling it to show routing table filtered by any filter, or telling bird to reconfigure. Press <tt/?/ at any time to get online help. Option <tt/-v/ can be passed to the client, telling it to dump numeric return codes. You do not necessarily need to use BIRDC to talk to BIRD, your own application could do that, too -- format of communication between BIRD and BIRDC is stable (see programmer's documentation). <chapt>Filters <sect>Introduction BIRD contains a rather simple programming language. (No, it can't yet read mail :-). There are two objects in this language: filters and functions. Filters are called by BIRD core when a route is being passed between protocola and routing tables. Filter language contains control structures such as if's and switches, but it allows no loops. Filters are interpreted. An example of a filter using many features can be found in <file>filter/test.conf</file>. Filter gets the route, looks at its attributes and modifies some of them if it wishes. At the end, it decides whether to pass the changed route through (using <cf/accept/) or whether to <cf/reject/ given route. A simple filter looks like this: <code> filter not_too_far int var; { if defined( rip_metric ) then var = rip_metric; else { var = 1; rip_metric = 1; } if rip_metric > 10 then reject "RIP metric is too big"; else accept "ok"; } </code> As you can see, a filter has a header, a list of local variables, and a body. The header consists of the <cf/filter/ keyword, followed by a (unique) name of filter. List of local variables consists of pairs <cf><M>type name</M>;</cf>, where each pair defines one local variable. Body consists of <cf> { <M>statements</M> }</cf>. Each <m/statement/ is terminated by <cf/;/. You can group several statements into one by using braces (<cf>{ <M>statements</M> }</cf>), that is useful if you want to make bigger block of code conditional. BIRD supports functions, so that you don't have to repeat same blocks of code over and over. Functions can have zero or more parameters and they can have local variables. Recursion is not allowed. They look like this: <code> function name () int local_variable; { local_variable = 5; } function with_parameters (int parameter) { print parameter; } </code> Unlike in C, variables are declared after function line but before the first {. You can't declare variables in nested blocks. Functions are called like in C: <cf>name(); with_parameters(5);</cf>. Function may return value using the <cf>return <m/[expr]/</cf> command. Returning a value exits from current function (this is similar to C). Filters are declared in a way similar to functions except they can't have explicit parameters. They get route table entry as an implicit parameter, it is also passed automatically to any functions called. The filter must terminate with either <cf/accept/ or <cf/reject/ statement. If there's runtime error in filter, the route is rejected. A nice trick to debug filters is to use <cf>show route filter <m/name/</cf> from the command line client. An example session might look like: <code> pavel@bug:~/bird$ ./birdc -s bird.ctl BIRD 0.0.0 ready. bird> show route 10.0.0.0/8 dev eth0 [direct1 23:21] (240) 195.113.30.2/32 dev tunl1 [direct1 23:21] (240) 127.0.0.0/8 dev lo [direct1 23:21] (240) bird> show route ? show route [<prefix>] [table <t>] [filter <f>] [all] [primary] [(import|protocol) ]... bird> show route filter { if 127.0.0.5 ~ net then accept; } 127.0.0.0/8 dev lo [direct1 23:21] (240) bird> </code> <sect>Data types Each variable and each value has certain type. Booleans, integers and enums are incompatible with each other (that is to prevent you from shooting in the foot). <descrip> <tag/bool/ This is a boolean type, it can have only two values, <cf/true/ and <cf/false/. Boolean is not compatible with integer and is the only type you can use in if statements. <tag/int/ This is a general integer type, you can expect it to store signed values from -2000000000 to +2000000000. Overflows are not checked. You can use <cf/0x1234/ syntax to write hexadecimal values. <tag/pair/ This is a pair of two short integers. Each component can have values from 0 to 65535. Literals of this type is written as <cf/(1234,5678)/. <tag/string/ This is a string of characters. There are no ways to modify strings in filters. You can pass them between functions, assign them to variables of type <cf/string/, print such variables, but you can't concatenate two strings. String literals are written as <cf/"This is a string constant"/. <tag/ip/ This type can hold a single IP address. Depending on the compile-time configuration of BIRD you are using, it is either an IPv4 or IPv6 address. IPv4 addresses are written (as you would expect) as <cf/1.2.3.4/. You can apply special operator <cf>.mask(<M>num</M>)</cf> on values of type ip. It masks out all but first <cf><M>num</M></cf> bits from ip address. So <cf/1.2.3.4.mask(8) = 1.0.0.0/ is true.  <tag/prefix/ This type can hold a network prefix consisting of IP address and prefix length. Prefix literals are written as <cf><M>ipaddress</M>/<M>pxlen</M></cf>, or <cf><m>ipaddress</m>/<m>netmask</m></cf> There are two special operators on prefix: <cf/.ip/, which separates ip address from the pair, and <cf/.len/, which separates prefix len from the pair. So <cf>1.2.0.0/16.pxlen = 16</cf> is true. <tag/int|ip|prefix|pair|enum set/ Filters recognize four types of sets. Sets are similar to strings: you can pass them around but you can't modify them. Literals of type <cf>set int</cf> look like <cf> [ 1, 2, 5..7 ]</cf>. As you can see, both simple values and ranges are permitted in sets. Sets of prefixes are special: you can specify which prefix lengths should match them by using <cf>[ 1.0.0.0/8+, 2.0.0.0/8-, 3.0.0.0/8{5,6} ]</cf>. <cf>3.0.0.0/8{5,6}</cf> matches prefixes <cf/3.X.X.X/, whose prefix length is 5 to 6. <cf><m>address</m>/<m>num</m>+</cf> is shorthand for <cf><m>address</m>/{0,<m/num/}</cf>, <cf><m>address</m>/<m/num/-</cf> is shorthand for <cf><m>address</m>/{0,<m/num-1/}</cf>. For example, <cf>1.2.0.0/16 ~ [ 1.0.0.0/8{ 15 , 17 } ]</cf> is true, but <cf>1.0.0.0/8 ~ [ 1.0.0.0/8- ]</cf> is false. <tag/enum/ Enumeration types are fixed in BIRD - you can't define your own variables of enumeration type, but some route attributes are of enumeration type. Enumeration types are incompatible with each other. <tag/bgppath/ BGP path is a list of autonomous system numbers. You can't write literals of this type. <tag/bgpmask/ BGP mask is a mask used for matching BGP paths (using <cf>path ˜ /2 3 5 ?/</cf> syntax). Matching is done using shell-like patterns: <cf/?/ means "any number of any autonomous systems". Pattern for single unknown autonomous system is not supported. (We did not want to use * because then it becomes too easy to write <cf>/*</cf> which is start of comment.) For example, <tt>/4 3 2 1/ ~ /? 4 3 ?/</tt> is true, but <tt>/4 3 2 1/ ~ /? 4 5 ?/</tt> is false.  <tag/clist/ Community list is similar to set of pairs, except that unlike other sets, it can be modified. There exist no literals of this type. </descrip> <sect>Operators  The filter language supports common integer operators <cf>(+,-,*,/)</cf>, parentheses <cf/(a*(b+c))/, comparison <cf/(a=b, a!=b, a<b, a>=b)/. Logical operations include unary not (<cf/!/), and (<cf/&&/) and or (<cf/||/). Special operators include <cf/˜/ for "in" operation. In operation can be used on element and set of that elements (returning true if element is within given set), or on IP and prefix (returning true if IP is within range defined by that prefix), or on prefix and prefix (returning true if first prefix is more specific than second) or on bgppath and bgpmask (returning true if path matches given pathmask) or on pair and clist (returning true if given community is element of community list). <sect>Control structures Filters support two control structures: conditions and case switches.  Syntax of condition is <cf>if <M>boolean expression</M> then <M>command</M>; else <M>command</M>;</cf> and you can use <cf>{ <M>command_1</M>; <M>command_2</M>; <M>...</M> }</cf> instead of one or both commands. <cf>else</cf> clause may be omitted. <cf>case</cf> is similar to case from Pascal. Syntax is <cf>case <m/expr/ { else | <m/num_or_prefix [ .. num_or_prefix]/: <m/statement/ ; [ ... ] }</cf>. Expression after <cf>case</cf> can be of any type that can be on the left side of the ˜ operator, and anything that could be a member of a set is allowed before <cf/:/. Multiple commands are allowed without <cf/{}/ grouping and break is implicit before each case. If argument matches neither of <cf/:/ clauses, <cf/else:/ clause is used. Here is example that uses <cf/if/ and <cf/case/ structures: <code> case arg1 { 2: print "two"; print "I can do more commands without {}"; 3 .. 5: print "three to five"; else: print "something else"; } if 1234 = i then printn "."; else { print "not 1234"; print "You need {} around multiple commands"; } </code> <sect>Route attributes An filter is implicitly passed route, and it can access its attributes just like it accesses variables. Attempt to access undefined attribute result in a runtime error; you can check if an attribute is defined using the <cf>defined( <m>attribute</m> )</cf> operator.  <descrip> <tag><m/prefix/ net</tag> Network the route is talking about. Read-only. (See the section about routing tables.) <tag><m/enum/ scope</tag> Address scope of the network (<cf/SCOPE_HOST/ for addresses local to this host, <cf/SCOPE_LINK/ for those specific for a physical link, ... ) <tag><m/int/ preference</tag> Preference of the route. (See section about routing tables.) <tag><m/ip/ from</tag> The router which the route has originated from. Read-only. <tag><m/ip/ gw</tag> Next hop packets routed using this route should be forwarded to. <tag><m/enum/ source</tag> what protocol has told me about this route. Possible values: <cf/RTS_DUMMY, RTS_STATIC, RTS_INHERIT, RTS_DEVICE, RTS_STATIC_DEVICE, RTS_REDIRECT, RTS_RIP, RTS_OSPF, RTS_OSPF_EXT, RTS_OSPF_IA, RTS_OSPF_BOUNDARY, RTS_BGP, RTS_PIPE/. <tag><m/enum/ cast</tag> Route type (<cf/RTC_UNICAST/ for normal routes, <cf/RTC_BROADCAST, RTC_MULTICAST, RTC_ANYCAST/ for broadcast, multicast and anycast routes.) Read-only. <tag><m/enum/ dest</tag> Type of destination the packets should be sent to (<cf/RTD_ROUTER/ for forwarding to a neighboring router, <cf/RTD_NETWORK/ for routing to directly-connected network, <cf/RTD_BLACKHOLE/ for packets to be silenty discarded, <cf/RTD_UNREACHABLE, RTD_PROHIBIT/ for packets that should be discarded with ICMP host unreachable / ICMP administratively prohibited messages.) Read-only. </descrip> There also exist some protocol-specific attributes, which are described in protocol sections. <sect>Statements The following statements are available: <descrip> <tag><m/variable/ = <m/expr/</tag> Set variable to a given value. <tag>accept|reject [ <m/expr/ ]</tag> Accept or reject the route, possibly printing <cf><m>expr</m></cf>. <tag>return <m/expr/</tag> Return <cf><m>expr</m></cf> from function, the function ends at this point. <tag>print|printn <m/expr/ [<m/, expr.../]</tag> Prints given expressions; useful mainly while debugging filters. The <cf/printn/ variant does not terminate the line. <tag>quitbird</tag> Terminates BIRD. Useful when debugging filter interpreter. </descrip> <chapt>Protocols <sect>BGP The Border Gateway Protocol is the routing protocol used for backbone level routing in the today's Internet. Contrary to other protocols, its convergence doesn't rely on all routers following the same rules for route selection, making it possible to implement any routing policy at any router in the network, the only restriction being that if a router advertises a route, it must accept and forward packets according to it. BGP works in terms of autonomous systems (often abbreviated as AS). Each AS is a part of the network with common management and common routing policy. Routers within each AS usually communicate using either a interior routing protocol (such as OSPF or RIP) or an interior variant of BGP (called iBGP). Boundary routers at the border of the AS communicate with their peers in the neighboring AS'es via exterior BGP (eBGP). Each BGP router sends to its neighbors updates of the parts of its routing table it wishes to export, along with complete path information (a list of AS'es the packet will travel through if it uses that particular route) in order to avoid routing loops. BIRD supports all requirements of the BGP4 standard as defined in RFC 1771<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1771.txt"> including several enhancements from the latest draft<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-idr-bgp4-09.txt">. It also supports the community attributes as per RFC 1997<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1997.txt">, capability negotiation defined in RFC 2842<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2842.txt">, For IPv6, it uses the standard multiprotocol extensions defined in RFC 2283<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2283.txt"> including changes described in the latest draft <htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-idr-bgp4-multiprotocol-v2-05.txt"> and applied to IPv6 according to RFC 2545<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2545.txt">. <sect1>Route selection rules BGP doesn't have any simple metric, so the rules for selection of an optimal route among multiple BGP routes with the same preference are a bit more complex and are implemented according to the following algorithm. First it uses the first rule, if there are more "best" routes, then it uses the second rule to choose among them and so on. <itemize> <item>Prefer route with the highest local preference attribute. <item>Prefer route with the shortest AS path. <item>Prefer IGP origin over EGP and EGP over incomplete. <item>Prefer the lowest value of the Multiple Exit Discriminator. <item>Prefer internal routes over external routes. <item>Prefer route with the lowest value of router ID of the advertising router. </itemize> <sect1>Configuration Each instance of the BGP corresponds to one neighboring router. This allows to set routing policy and all other parameters differently for each neighbor using the following protocol parameters: <descrip> <tag>local as <m/number/</tag> Define which AS we are part of. (Note that contrary to other IP routers, BIRD is able to act as a router located in multiple AS'es simultaneously, but in such cases you need to tweak the BGP paths manually in the filters to get consistent behavior.) This parameter is mandatory. <tag>neighbor <m/ip/ as <m/number/</tag> Define neighboring router this instance will be talking to and what AS it's located in. Unless you use the <cf/multihop/ clause, it must be directly connected to one of your router's interfaces. In case the neighbor is in the same AS as we are, we automatically switch to iBGP. This parameter is mandatory. <tag>multihop <m/number/ via <m/ip/</tag> Configure multihop BGP to a neighbor which is connected at most <m/number/ hops far and to which we should route via our direct neighbor with address <m/ip/. Default: switched off. <tag>next hop self</tag> Avoid calculation of the Next Hop attribute and always advertise our own source address (see below) as a next hop. This needs to be used only occasionally to circumvent misconfigurations of other routers. Default: disabled. <tag>source address <m/ip/</tag> Define local address we should use for next hop calculation. Default: the address of the local end of the interface our neighbor is connected to. <tag>disable after error <m/switch/</tag> When an error is encountered (either locally or by the other side), disable the instance automatically and wait for an administrator to solve the problem manually. Default: off. <tag>hold time <m/number/</tag> Time in seconds to wait for a keepalive message from the other side before considering the connection stale. Default: depends on agreement with the neighboring router, we prefer 240 seconds if the other side is willing to accept it. <tag>startup hold time <m/number/</tag> Value of the hold timer used before the routers have a chance to exchange OPEN messages and agree on the real value. Default: 240 seconds. <tag>keepalive time <m/number/</tag> Delay in seconds between sending of two consecutive keepalive messages. Default: One third of the hold time. <tag>connect retry time <m/number/</tag> Time in seconds to wait before retrying a failed connect attempt. Default: 120 seconds. <tag>start delay time <m/number/</tag> Delay in seconds between protocol startup and first attempt to connect. Default: 5 seconds. <tag>error wait time <m/number/, <m/number/</tag> Minimum and maximum delay in seconds between protocol failure (either local or reported by the peer) and automatic startup. Doesn't apply when <cf/disable after error/ is configured. If consecutive errors happen, the delay is increased exponentially until it reaches the maximum. Default: 60, 300. <tag>error forget time <m/number/</tag> Maximum time in seconds between two protocol failures to treat them as a error sequence which makes the <cf/error wait time/ increase exponentially. Default: 300 seconds. <tag>path metric <m/switch/</tag> Enable comparison of path lengths when deciding which BGP route is the best one. Default: on. <tag>default bgp_med <m/number/</tag> Value of the Multiple Exit Discriminator to be used during route selection when the MED attribute is missing. Default: infinite. <tag>default bgp_local_pref <m/number/</tag> Value of the Local Preference to be used during route selection when the Local Preference attribute is missing. Default: 0. </descrip> <sect1>Attributes BGP defines several route attributes. Some of them (those marked with `I' in the table below) are available on internal BGP connections only, some of them (marked with `O') are optional. <descrip> <tag>bgppath <cf/bgp_path/</tag> Sequence of AS numbers describing the AS path the packet will travel through when forwarded according to this route. On internal BGP connections it doesn't contain the number of the local AS. <tag>int <cf/bgp_local_pref/ [I]</tag> Local preference value used for selection among multiple BGP routes (see the selection rules above). It's used as an additional metric which is propagated through the whole local AS. <tag>int <cf/bgp_med/ [IO]</tag> The Multiple Exit Discriminator of the route is an optional attribute which is often used within the local AS to reflect interior distances to various boundary routers. See the route selection rules above for exact semantics. <tag>enum <cf/bgp_origin/</tag> Origin of the route: either <cf/ORIGIN_IGP/, if the route has originated in interior routing protocol of an AS or <cf/ORIGIN_EGP/, if it's been imported from the <tt>EGP</tt> protocol (nowadays it seems to be obsolete) or <cf/ORIGIN_INCOMPLETE/, if the origin is unknown. <tag>ip <cf/bgp_next_hop/</tag> Next hop to be used for forwarding of packets to this destination. On internal BGP connections, it's an address of the originating router if it's inside the local AS or a boundary router the packet will leave the AS through if it's an exterior route, so each BGP speaker within the AS has a chance to use the shortest interior path possible to this point. <tag>void <cf/bgp_atomic_aggr/ [O]</tag> This is an optional attribute which carries no value, but which sole presence indicates that the route has been aggregated from multiple routes by some AS on the path from the originator.  <tag>clist <cf/bgp_community/ [O]</tag> List of community values associated with the route. Each such value is a pair (represented as a <cf/pair/ data type inside the filters) of 16-bit integers, the first of them containing a number of the AS which defines the community and the second one is a per-AS identifier. There are lots of uses of the community mechanism, but generally they are used to carry policy information like "don't export to USA peers". As each AS can define its own routing policy, it also has a complete freedom about which community attributes it defines and what their semantics will be. </descrip> <sect1>Example <code> protocol bgp { local as 65000; # Use a private AS number neighbor 62.168.0.130 as 5588; # Our neighbor multihop 20 via 62.168.0.13; # Which is connected indirectly export filter { # We use non-trivial export rules if source = RTS_STATIC then { # Export only static routes # Assign our community bgp_community.add((65000,5678)); # Artificially increase path length # by prepending local AS number twice if bgp_path ~ / 65000 / then bgp_path.prepend(65000); accept; } reject; }; import all; source address 62.168.0.1; # Use non-standard source address } </code> <sect>Device The Device protocol is not a real routing protocol as it doesn't generate any routes and only serves as a module for getting information about network interfaces from the kernel. Except for very unusual circumstances, you probably should include this protocol in the configuration since almost all other protocol require network interfaces to be defined in order to work. The only configurable thing is interface scan time: <descrip> <tag>scan time <m/number/</tag> Time in seconds between two scans of the network interface list. On systems where we are notified about interface status changes asynchronously (such as newer versions of Linux), we need to scan the list only to avoid confusion by lost notifications, so the default time is set to a large value. </descrip> As the Device protocol doesn't generate any routes, it cannot have any attributes. Example configuration looks really simple: <code> protocol device { scan time 10; # Scan the interfaces often } </code> <sect>Direct The Direct protocol is a simple generator of device routes for all the directly connected networks according to the list of interfaces provided by the kernel via the Device protocol. It's highly recommended to include this protocol in your configuration unless you want to use BIRD as a route server or a route reflector, that is on a machine which doesn't forward packets and only participates in distribution of routing information. Only configurable thing about direct is what interfaces it watches: <descrip> <tag>interface <m/pattern [, ...]/</tag> By default, the Direct protocol will generate device routes for all the interfaces available. If you want to restrict it to some subset of interfaces (for example if you're using multiple routing tables for policy routing and some of the policy domains don't contain all interfaces), just use this clause. </descrip> Direct device routes don't contain any specific attributes. Example config might look like this: <code> protocol direct { interface "-arc*", "*"; # Exclude the ARCnets } </code> <sect>Kernel The Kernel protocol is not a real routing protocol. Instead of communicating with other routers in the network, it performs synchronization of BIRD's routing tables with OS kernel. Basically, it sends all routing table updates to the kernel and from time to time it scans the kernel tables to see whether some routes have disappeared (for example due to unnoticed up/down transition of an interface) or whether an `alien' route has been added by someone else (depending on the <cf/learn/ switch, such routes are either deleted or we accept them to our table). If your OS supports only a single routing table, you can configure only one instance of the Kernel protocol. If it supports multiple tables (in order to allow policy routing), you can run as many instances as you want, but each of them must be connected to a different BIRD routing table and to a different kernel table. <sect1>Configuration <descrip> <tag>persist <m/switch/</tag> Tell BIRD to leave all its routes in the routing tables when it exits (instead of cleaning them up). <tag>scan time <m/number/</tag> Time in seconds between two scans of the kernel routing table. <tag>learn <m/switch/</tag> Enable learning of routes added to the kernel routing tables by other routing daemons or by the system administrator. This is possible only on systems which support identification of route authorship. <tag>kernel table <m/number/</tag> Select which kernel table should this particular instance of the Kernel protocol work with. Available only on systems supporting multiple routing tables. </descrip> A simple configuration can look this way: <code> protocol kernel { import all; export all; } </code> Or for a system with two routing tables: <code> protocol kernel { # Primary routing table learn; # Learn alien routes from the kernel persist; # Don't remove routes on bird shutdown scan time 10; # Scan kernel routing table every 10 seconds import all; export all; } protocol kernel { # Secondary routing table table auxtable; kernel table 100; export all; } </code> The Kernel protocol doesn't define any route attributes. <sect>OSPF <sect1>Introduction Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a quite complex interior gateway protocol. The current IPv4 version (OSPFv2) is defined in RFC 2328 <htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2328.txt">. It's a link state (a.k.a. shortest path first) protocol -- Each router maintains a database describing the autonomous system's topology. Each participating router has an identical copy of the database and all routers run the same algorithm calculating a shortest path tree with themselves as a root. OSPF choses the least cost path as the best path. In OSPF, the autonomous system can be split to several areas in order to reduce the amount of resources consumed for exchanging the routing information and to protect the other areas from incorrect routing data. Topology of the area is hidden to the rest of the autonomous system. Unfortunatelly multiple OSPF areas are not yet fully supported by this version of BIRD and neither is the IPv6 version (OSPFv3). Another very important feature of OSPF is that it can keep routing information from other protocols (like Static or BGP) in its link state database as external routes. Each external route can be tagged by the advertising router, making possible to pass additional information between routers on the boundary of the autonomous system. OSPF quickly detects topological changes in the autonomous system (such as router interface failures) and calculates new loop-free routes after a period of convergence. This period is short and involves only minimal routing traffic. Each router participating in OSPF routing periodically sends Hello messages to all its interfaces. This allows neighbors to be discovered dynamically. Then the neighbors exchange theirs parts of the link state database and keep it identical by flooding updates. The flooding process is reliable and ensures that each router detects all changes. <sect1>Configuration <code> protocol ospf <name> { rfc1583compat <bool>; area <id> { stub <bool>; tick <num>; interface <interface pattern> { cost <num>; hello <num>; retransmit <num>; priority <num>; wait <num>; dead count <num>; type [broadcast|nonbroadcast|pointopoint]; authetication [none|simple]; password "<text>"; neighbors { <ip>; }; }; }; } </code> <descrip> <tag>rfc1583compat <M>bool</M></tag> This option controls compatibility of routing table calculation with RFC 1583<htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1583.txt">. Default value is no. <tag>area <M>id</M></tag> This defines an OSPF area with given area ID (an integer or an IPv4 address, similarly to a router ID). The most important area is the backbone (ID 0) to which every other area must be connected. <tag>stub <M>bool</M></tag> No external routes are flooded into stub areas. Default value is no. <tag>tick <M>num</M></tag> The routing table calculation is not performed when a single link state change arrives. To lower the CPU utilization, it's processed later at periodical intervals of <m/num/ seconds. The default value is 7. <tag>interface <M>pattern</M></tag> Defines that the specified interfaces belong to the area being defined. <tag>cost <M>num</M></tag> Specifies output cost (metric) of an interface. Default value is 10. <tag>hello <M>num</M></tag> Specifies interval in seconds between sending of Hello messages. Beware, all routers on the same network need to have the same hello interval. Default value is 10. <tag>retransmit <M>num</M></tag> Specifies interval in seconds between retransmissions of unacknoledged updates. Default value is 5. <tag>priority <M>num</M></tag> On every multiple access network (e.g., the Ethernet) Designed Router and Backup Designed router are elected. These routers have some special functions in the flooding process. Higher priority increases preferences in this election. Routers with priority 0 are not eligible. Default value is 1. <tag>wait <M>num</M></tag> After start, router waits for the specified number of seconds between starting election and building adjacency. Default value is 40. <tag>dead count <M>num</M></tag> When the router does not receive any messages from a neighbor in <m/dead count/*<m/hello/ seconds, it will consider the neighbor down. <tag>type broadcast</tag> BIRD detects a type of a connected network automatically, but sometimes it's convenient to force use of a different type manually. On broadcast networks, flooding and Hello messages are sent using multicasts (a single packet for all the neighbors). <tag>type nonbroadcast</tag> On nonbroadcast networks, the packets are sent to each neighbor separately because of lack of multicast capabilities. <tag>type pointopoint</tag> Point-to-point networks connect just 2 routers together. No election is performed there which reduces the number of messages sent. <tag>authetication none</tag> No passwords are sent in OSPF packets. This is the default value. <tag>authetication simple</tag> Every packet carries 8 bytes of password. Received packets lacking this password are ignored. This autentication mechanism is very weak. <tag>password <M>text</M></tag> An 8-byte password used for authentication. <tag>neighbors</tag> A set of neighbors to which Hello messages on nonbroadcast networks are to be sent. </descrip> <sect1>Attributes OSPF defines three route attributes. Each internal route has a metric. External routes use metric type 1 or metric type 2. A metric of type 1 is comparable with internal metrics, a metric of type 2 is always longer than any metric of type 1 or any internal metric. Each external route can also carry a tag which is a 32-bit integer which is used when exporting routes to other protocols; otherwise, it doesn't affect routing inside the OSPF domain at all. <sect1>Example <code> protocol ospf MyOSPF { export filter { if source = RTS_BGP then { ospf_metric1 = 100; accept; } reject; }; area 0.0.0.0 { tick 8; interface "eth*" { cost 11; hello 15; priority 100; retransmit 7; authentication simple; password "aaa"; }; interface "ppp*" { cost 100; }; }; area 120 { stub yes; interface "-arc0" , "arc*" { type nonbroadcast; authentication none; wait 50; dead count 6; neighbors { 192.168.120.1; 192.168.120.2; 192.168.120.10; }; }; }; } </code> <sect>Pipe <sect1>Introduction The Pipe protocol serves as a link between two routing tables, allowing routes to be passed from a table declared as primary (i.e., the one the pipe is connected using the <cf/table/ configuration keyword) to the secondary one (declared using <cf/peer table/) and vice versa, depending on what's allowed by the filters. Export filters control export of routes from the primary table to the secondary one, import filters control the opposite direction. The primary use of multiple routing tables and the pipe protocol is for policy routing, where handling of a single packet doesn't depend only on its destination address, but also on its source address, source interface, protocol type and other similar parameters. In many systems (Linux 2.2 being a good example) the kernel allows to enforce routing policies by defining routing rules which choose one of several routing tables to be used for a packet according to its parameters. Setting of these rules is outside the scope of BIRD's work (you can use the <tt/ip/ command), but you can create several routing tables in BIRD, connect them to the kernel ones, use filters to control which routes appear in which tables and also you can employ the Pipe protocol to export a selected subset of one table in another one. <sect1>Configuration <descrip> <tag>peer table <m/table/</tag> Define secondary routing table to connect to. The primary one is selected by the <cf/table/ keyword. </descrip> <sect1>Attributes The Pipe protocol doesn't define any route attributes. <sect1>Example Let's consider a router which serves as a boundary router of two different autonomous systems, each of them connected to a subset of interfaces of the router, having its own exterior connectivity and wishing to use the other AS as a backup connectivity in case of outage of its own exterior line. Probably the simplest solution to this situation is to use two routing tables (we'll call them <cf/as1/ and <cf/as2/) and set up kernel routing rules, so that packets having arrived from interfaces belonging to the first AS will be routed according to <cf/as1/ and similarly for the second AS. Thus we have split our router to two logical routers, each one acting on its own routing table, having its own routing protocols on its own interfaces. In order to use the other AS's routes for backup purposes, we can pass the routes between the tables through a Pipe protocol while decreasing their preferences and correcting their BGP paths to reflect AS boundary crossing. <code> table as1; # Define the tables table as2; protocol kernel kern1 { # Synchronize them with the kernel table as1; kernel table 1; } protocol kernel kern2 { table as2; kernel table 2; } protocol bgp bgp1 { # The outside connections table as1; local as 1; neighbor 192.168.0.1 as 1001; export all; import all; } protocol bgp bgp2 { table as2; local as 2; neighbor 10.0.0.1 as 1002; export all; import all; } protocol pipe { # The Pipe table as1; peer table as2; export filter { if net ~ [ 1.0.0.0/8+] then { # Only AS1 networks if preference>10 then preference = preference-10; if source=RTS_BGP then bgp_path.prepend(1); accept; } reject; }; import filter { if net ~ [ 2.0.0.0/8+] then { # Only AS2 networks if preference>10 then preference = preference-10; if source=RTS_BGP then bgp_path.prepend(2); accept; } reject; }; } </code> <sect>RIP <sect1>Introduction The RIP protocol (also sometimes called Rest In Pieces) is a simple protocol, where each router broadcasts (to all its neighbors) distances to all networks it can reach. When a router hears distance to another network, it increments it and broadcasts it back. Broadcasts are done in regular intervals. Therefore, if some network goes unreachable, routers keep telling each other that its distance is the original distance plus 1 (actually, plus interface metric, which is usually one). After some time, the distance reaches infinity (that's 15 in RIP) and all routers know that network is unreachable. RIP tries to minimize situations where counting to infinity is necessary, because it is slow. Due to infinity being 16, you can't use RIP on networks where maximal distance is higher than 15 hosts. You can read more about rip at <HTMLURL URL="http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/rip-charter.html" name="http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/rip-charter.html">. Both IPv4 and IPv6 versions of RIP are supported by BIRD, historical RIPv1 is currently not fully supported. RIP is a very simple protocol, and it has a lot of shortcomings. Slow convergence, big network load and inability to handle larger networks makes it pretty much obsolete in IPv4 world. (It is still usable on very small networks.) It is widely used in IPv6 networks, because there are no good implementations of OSPFv3. <sect1>Configuration In addition to options common for all to other protocols, RIP supports the following ones: <descrip> <tag/authentication none|password|md5/ selects authentication method to be used. <cf/none/ means that packets are not authenticated at all, <cf/password/ means that a plaintext password is embedded into each packet, and <cf/md5/ means that packets are authenticated using a md5 cryptographic hash. If you set authentication to not-none, it is a good idea to add <cf>passwords { }</cf> section. <tag>honor always|neighbor|never </tag>specifies when should requests for dumping routing table be honored. (Always, when sent from a host on a directly connected network or never.) Routing table updates are honored only from neighbors, that is not configurable. </descrip> There are two options that can be specified per-interface. First is <cf>metric</cf>, with default one. Second is <cf>mode multicast|broadcast|quiet|nolisten|version1</cf>, it selects mode for rip to work in. If nothing is specified, rip runs in multicast mode. <cf>version1</cf> is currently equivalent to <cf>broadcast</cf>, and it makes RIP talk to a broadcast address even through multicast mode is possible. <cf>quiet</cf> option means that RIP will not transmit any periodic messages to this interface and <cf>nolisten</cf> means that RIP will send to this interface but not listen to it. The following options generally override behavior specified in RFC. If you use any of these options, BIRD will no longer be RFC-compliant, which means it will not be able to talk to anything other than equally configured BIRD. I have warned you. <descrip> <tag>port <M>number</M></tag> selects IP port to operate on, default 520. (This is useful when testing BIRD, if you set this to an address >1024, you will not need to run bird with UID==0). <tag>infinity <M>number</M></tag> selects the value of infinity, default is 16. Bigger values will make protocol convergence even slower. <tag>period <M>number</M> </tag>specifies the number of seconds between periodic updates. Default is 30 seconds. A lower number will mean faster convergence but bigger network load. Do not use values lower than 10. <tag>timeout time <M>number</M> </tag>specifies how old route has to be to be considered unreachable. Default is 4*<cf/period/. <tag>garbage time <M>number</M> </tag>specifies how old route has to be to be discarded. Default is 10*<cf/period/. </descrip> <sect1>Attributes RIP defines two route attributes: <descrip> <tag>int <cf/rip_metric/</tag> RIP metric of the route (ranging from 0 to <cf/infinity/). When routes from different RIP instances are available and all of them have the same preference, BIRD prefers the route with lowest <cf/rip_metric/. <tag>int <cf/rip_tag/</tag> RIP route tag: a 16-bit number which can be used to carry additional information with the route (for example, an originating AS number in case of external routes). </descrip> <sect1>Example <code> protocol rip MyRIP_test { debug all; port 1520; period 10; garbage time 60; interface "eth0" { metric 3; mode multicast; } "eth1" { metric 2; mode broadcast; }; honor neighbor; authentication none; import filter { print "importing"; accept; }; export filter { print "exporting"; accept; }; } </code> <sect>Static The Static protocol doesn't communicate with other routers in the network, but instead it allows you to define routes manually. This is often used for specifying how to forward packets to parts of the network which don't use dynamic routing at all and also for defining sink routes (i.e., those telling to return packets as undeliverable if they are in your IP block, you don't have any specific destination for them and you don't want to send them out through the default route to prevent routing loops). There are three types of static routes: `classical' routes telling to forward packets to a neighboring router, device routes specifying forwarding to hosts on a directly connected network and special routes (sink, blackhole etc.) which specify a special action to be done instead of forwarding the packet. When the particular destination is not available (the interface is down or the next hop of the route is not a neighbor at the moment), Static just uninstalls the route from the table it is connected to and adds it again as soon as the destination becomes adjacent again. The Static protocol has no configuration options. Instead, the definition of the protocol contains a list of static routes: <descrip> <tag>route <m/prefix/ via <m/ip/</tag> Static route through a neighboring router. <tag>route <m/prefix/ via <m/"interface"/</tag> Static device route through an interface to hosts on a directly connected network. <tag>route <m/prefix/ drop|reject|prohibit</tag> Special routes specifying to drop the packet, return it as unreachable or return it as administratively prohibited. </descrip> Static routes have no specific attributes. Example static config might look like this: <code> protocol static { table testable; # Connect to a non-default routing table route 0.0.0.0/0 via 62.168.0.13; # Default route route 62.168.0.0/25 reject; # Sink route route 10.2.0.0/24 via "arc0"; # Secondary network } </code> <chapt>Problems BIRD is relatively young system, and probably contains some bugs. You can report bugs at bird-users mailing list (<HTMLURL URL="mailto:bird-users@bird.network.cz" name="bird-users@bird.network.cz">), but before you do, please make sure you have read available documentation, make sure are running latest version (available at <HTMLURL URL="ftp://bird.network.cz/pub/bird" name="bird.network.cz:/pub/bird">). (Of course, patch which fixes the bug along with bug report is always welcome). If you want to use BIRD, join mailing list by sending <tt/subscribe bird-users/ to <HTMLURL URL="mailto:majordomo@bird.network.cz" name="majordomo@bird.network.cz">. Main home page of bird is <HTMLURL URL="http://bird.network.cz/" name="http://bird.network.cz/">. When trying to understand, what is going on, Internet standards are relevant reading; you can get them from <HTMLURL URL="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/" name="ftp.rfc-editor.org"> (or nicely sorted version from <HTMLURL URL="ftp://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/pub/rfc" name="atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz:/pub/rfc">). <it/Good luck!/ </book>