Re: FRR for BGP route reflectors?

[Saku Ytti via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

On Wed, 3 Jun 2026 at 18:05, André Dias via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:

> I use FRR a lot in ISPs that I work for, but in cases of RR I prefer to use GoBGP or BIRD. I prefer GoBGP or Bird 
> instead FRR because they are easier to automate.

It boggles my mind that someone goes 'I'm going to write this very
complex daemon' and then they proceed to write monolithic tightly
coupled CLI+daemon+logic.

So we have a huge collection of BGP implementations, as mentioned just
here, frr, gobgp, bird, rustybgp, openbgp, exabgp and many many
others. But we don't really have any BGP library approaching a similar
maturity level. While to me it seems it should have been an obvious
win for any project, to start day1 with decoupled library, cli and
daemon as separate libraries, i see it reducing work day1 due to
forcing more maintainability in design.

Then instead of using low performance, lacking or non-existing APIs in
your automation, you could write your own BGP worker using the library
to have superior flexibility and performance, and exactly the
behaviour you want. Many things you cannot do at all, because you
don't have a library, like fuzzing, the daemon won't allow you to do
wrong/bad things.

So please, the next person planning to write BGP or whatever project
they're thinking of, separate the logic and daemon. Thank you.


-- 
  ++ytti
_______________________________________________
NANOG mailing list 
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog () lists nanog org/message/OPAVVROPAXNFN5VTGB5RDLYQ4HPQGGGT/