[Xorp-users] XORP versions

Pavlin Radoslavov pavlin at icir.org
Sun Jan 13 21:22:18 PST 2008


Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com> wrote:

> Mikael Johansson wrote:
> > We are evaluating using XORP in a network of about 500 routers, some
> > of which would be XORP routers. There have been some concerns about
> > stability in our organization. Our internal testing has noticed that
> > XORP routing processes sometimes die in situations
> > where processor load is high. Is there something that could be done to
> > increase stability, except to make sure that routing processes get
> > enough processor time? Should we use the latest XORP release 1.4, or
> > the most recent CVS version? When is XORP-1.5 being released? We are
> > using multicasting, OSPF and BGP.
> >   
> Send details on the crashes (stack-traces from gdb, etc).  Use the most 
> recent cvs, it
> fixes a lot of bugs, and at least on Linux, you can run multiple xorp 
> instances virtualized
> using unique routing tables.  No patches or xen like things are needed 
> if you have a
> modern OS (Fedora 8, for instance).
> 
> We have run at least 20 instances, for example.
> > With regards to features, the most critical is the lack of
> > virtualization, because we need to run two or more OSPF processes
> > which are completely isolated from each other. This can probably be
> > implemented in Linux using Xen. Have there been efforts to get XORP
> > running in a virtualized environment?
> >   
> Search back through the archives for my name and answers to my many 
> questions. :)

In the context of virtualization, you can run multiple XORP
instances, but only for unicast protocols (BGP probably excluded due
to some short-term reasons), and only on Linux which supports
multiple unicast forwarding tables.
You can't run do this for multicast. One of the reasons is that the
UNIX kernel allows only a single instance of the special multicast
routing socket.

If you want to run multiple XORP instances, please drop us an email,
so we can give you the technical details (they are not in the in the
user documentation yet).

If you use XORP on top of Xen or Vmware, then you are practically
running multiple OS instances, so the above limitations don't
apply.

An alternative solution is to use IMUNES:
http://www.imunes.net/
http://www.tel.fer.hr/imunes/

It virtualizes the kernel networking stack itself and is extremely
lightweight. It also has a very cool GUI which gives you lots of
control over the virtual topology management.
It is available for FreeBSD, so if you don't have OS requirements
I'd strongly recommend considering it.
Marko Zec (who wrote IMUNES) is on this mailing list and can give
you more information about it.

Regards,
Pavlin



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