Re: Last-resort tunnel recommendations on WAN network ...

[Owen DeLong via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

Disagree strongly here. 

CARP is an abomination that should never have been inflicted on the world. CARP is an act of arrogance wherein the BSD 
developers went to the IETF and demanded a port allocation for a service that was largely duplicative of existing 
functionality provided by VRRP. They refused to go through the internet-draft process or work with the relevant working 
group(s) and instead ended up just overloading the port assignments for VRRP such that CARP becomes a huge PITA for any 
network engineer who encounters it on a network running or deploying VRRP. 

The BSD team lost a lot of my previous respect when they did this. Yes, BSD routing is also a viable candidate, but 
CARP just shouldn’t be. 

Owen


> On Mar 19, 2026, at 11:07, Owen DeLong <owen () delong com> wrote:
>
> 
>
> > Yes, systemd-networkd is very capable (if arcane and unfriendly at times) for static configuration persistence.  
> > NetworkManager is more geared toward and indeed seems better for systems that are using lots of runtime dynamic 
> > configuration (DHCP, 802.1x, etc.) and also provides better desktop environment integration.
>
> Agree to disagree here. The ability to control DHCP and 802.1x in systemd-networkd is far more mature and capable 
> than NetworkManager. The one and only place where network manager shines is if you are traversing many different 
> wireless networks with different but basic configurations and limited IPv6 concerns. (It’s great for a normal laptop 
> user who can manage it entirely within the GUI).
>
> I would never use it on anything doing any sort of routing or bridging. Not even like a mobile hotspot.
>
> > I mostly use systemd-networkd on my generic-Linux-distro-as-a-router and adjacent (local DHCP/DNS, for example) 
> > systems.
>
> I’ve decided that it’s the best Swiss Army knife for my needs and rather than try to stay up on the idiosyncrasies of 
> multiple packages, I try to just use it wherever I can.
>
> YMMV.
>
> Owen

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