OpenBGPD 9.1, the portable edition of the routing package developed by the OpenBSD project, has been released. This version has been adapted for use on FreeBSD and Linux, with support for Alpine, Debian, Fedora, RHEL/CentOS, and Ubuntu. In order to ensure portability, parts of the code from projects such as OpenNTPD, OpenSSH, and LibreSSL were utilized. OpenBGPD supports most of the BGP 4 specifications and complies with RFC8212 requirements, focusing on the most popular and common functions.
Development of OpenBGPD is supported by the regional Internet registrar RIPE NCC, aiming to bring its functionality to servers for routing at interoperator traffic exchange points. The project is also working towards creating a full-fledged alternative package, BIRD. Other open alternatives implementing the BGP protocol include FRRouting, GoBGP, ExaBGP, and Bio-Routing.
Emphasizing security and reliability, OpenBGPD implements strict verification of parameters, buffer boundary monitoring, privilege separation, and access restriction to system calls. The project also boasts a convenient syntax for configuration definition language, high performance, and memory efficiency.
Key changes in the new version of OpenBGPD include improved performance of outbound filters, enhanced processing in the Route Decision Engine (RDE) process, optimized logging of attribute parsing errors, and the addition of extra metrics to evaluate memory consumption in the ‘show rib memory’ command.
Sources: Release Announcement, OpenBGPD GitHub, OpenBGPD Official Website, BIRD, ExaBGP, Bio-Routing, Change Log.