BiRD

BIRD is an open source implementation for routing Internet Protocol packets on Unix-like operating systems.

It was developed as a school project at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, and is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

BIRD supports Internet Protocol version 4 and version 6 by running separate daemons. It establishes multiple routing tables, and uses BGP, RIP, and OSPF routing protocols, as well as statically defined routes. Its design differs significantly from GNU Zebra and Quagga. Currently BIRD is included in many Linux distributions, such as Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora.

BIRD is used in several Internet exchanges, such as the London Internet Exchange (LINX), LONAP, DE-CIX and MSK-IX) as a route server, where it replaced Quagga because of its scalability issues.[8] According to the 2012 Euro-IX survey, BIRD is the most used route server amongst European Internet exchanges.

In 2010, CZ.NIC, the current sponsor of BIRD development, received the LINX Conspicuous Contribution Award for contribution of BIRD to the advancement in route server technology.

Project goals

• Opensource routing daemon – alternative to Quagga/Zebra
• Fast and efficient
• Portable, modular
• Support current routing protocols
• IPv6 and IPv4 in one source code – dual compilation