Once upon a time, far far away, there were the old Bird developers
discussing what direction of route flow shall be called import and
export. They decided to say "import to protocol" and "export to table"
when speaking about a protocol. When speaking about a table, they
spoke about "importing to table" and "exporting to protocol".
The latter terminology was adopted in configuration, then also the
bird CLI in commit ea2ae6dd0 started to use it (in year 2009). Now
it's 2018 and the terminology is the latter. Import is from protocol to
table, export is from table to protocol. Anyway, there was still an
import_control hook which executed right before route export.
One thing is funny. There are two commits in April 1999 with just two
minutes between them. The older announces the final settlement
on config terminology, the newer uses the other definition. Let's see
their commit messages as the git-log tool shows them (the newer first):
commit 9e0e485e50
Author: Martin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>
Date: Mon Apr 5 20:17:59 1999 +0000
Added some new protocol hooks (look at the comments for better explanation):
make_tmp_attrs Convert inline attributes to ea_list
store_tmp_attrs Convert ea_list to inline attributes
import_control Pre-import decisions
commit 5056c559c4
Author: Martin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>
Date: Mon Apr 5 20:15:31 1999 +0000
Changed syntax of attaching filters to protocols to hopefully the final
version:
EXPORT <filter-spec> for outbound routes (i.e., those announced
by BIRD to the rest of the world).
IMPORT <filter-spec> for inbound routes (i.e., those imported
by BIRD from the rest of the world).
where <filter-spec> is one of:
ALL pass all routes
NONE drop all routes
FILTER <name> use named filter
FILTER { <filter> } use explicitly defined filter
For all protocols, the default is IMPORT ALL, EXPORT NONE. This includes
the kernel protocol, so that you need to add EXPORT ALL to get the previous
configuration of kernel syncer (as usually, see doc/bird.conf.example for
a bird.conf example :)).
Let's say RIP to this almost 19-years-old inconsistency. For now, if you
import a route, it is always from protocol to table. If you export a
route, it is always from table to protocol.
And they lived happily ever after.
The new MRT protocol is responsible for periodic RIB table dumps in the
MRT format (RFC 6396). Also the existing code for BGP4MP MRT dumps is
refactored and splitted between BGP to MRT protocols, will be more
integrated into MRT in the future.
Example:
protocol mrt {
table "*";
filename "%N_%F_%T.mrt";
period 60;
}
It is partially based on the old MRT code from Pavel Tvrdik.
This is a fundamental change of an original (1999) concept of route
processing inside BIRD. During import/export, there was a temporary
ea_list created which was to be used instead of the another one inside
the route itself.
This led to some confusion, quirks, and strange filter code that handled
extended route attributes. Dropping it now.
The protocol interface has changed in an uniform way -- the
`struct ea_list *attrs` argument has been removed from store_tmp_attrs(),
import_control(), rt_notify() and get_route_info().
Basic support for SAFI 4 and 128 (MPLS labeled IP and VPN) for IPv4 and
IPv6. Should work for route reflector, but does not properly handle
originating routes with next hop self.
Based on patches from Jan Matejka.
Dropped struct mpnh and mpnh_*()
Now struct nexthop exists, nexthop_*(), and also included struct nexthop
into struct rta.
Also converted RTD_DEVICE and RTD_ROUTER to RTD_UNICAST. If it is needed
to distinguish between these two cases, RTD_DEVICE is equivalent to
IPA_ZERO(a->nh.gw), RTD_ROUTER is then IPA_NONZERO(a->nh.gw).
From now on, we also explicitely want C99 compatible compiler. We assume
that this 20-year norm should be known almost everywhere.
Prefix and bucket tables are initialized when entering established state
but not explicitly freed when leaving it (that is handled by protocol
restart). With graceful restart, BGP may enter and leave established
state multiple times without hard protocol restart causing memory leak.
Commit 3c09af41... changed behavior of int_set_add() from prepend to
append, which makes more sense for community list, but prepend must be
used for cluster list. Add int_set_prepend() and use it in cluster list
handling code.
Add support for large communities (draft-ietf-idr-large-community),
96bit alternative to RFC 1997 communities.
Thanks to Matt Griswold for the original patch.
Although RFC 4271 does not forbid empty path segments, they are useless
and some implementations consider them invalid. It is clarified in RFC 7606,
specifying that AS_PATH with empty segment is considered malformed.
When 'import keep rejected' protocol option is activated, routes
rejected by the import filter are kept in the routing table, but they
are hidden and not propagated to other protocols. It is possible to
examine them using 'show route rejected'.
Allows to send and receive multiple routes for one network by one BGP
session. Also contains necessary core changes to support this (routing
tables accepting several routes for one network from one protocol).
It needs some more cleanup before merging to the master branch.
