Zebra is a discontinued

routing Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a Network theory, network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched ...

software package that provides

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

based routing services with

routing protocols A routing protocol specifies how routers communicate with each other to distribute information that enables them to select paths between nodes on a computer network. Routers perform the traffic directing functions on the Internet; data packets ...

support such as RIP,

OSPF Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a routing protocol for Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It uses a link state routing (LSR) algorithm and falls into the group of interior gateway protocols (IGPs), operating within a single autonomous sys ...

and

BGP Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous system (Internet), autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. BGP is classified as a path-vect ...

. Zebra also supports BGP Route Reflector and

Route Server A route server is a type of Server that is used in Network engineering. The original role of a route server was to be an easily accessible source of Routing information about a particular network, for other machines as well as for remote netwo ...

behavior. In addition to

IPv4 Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the first version of the Internet Protocol (IP) as a standalone specification. It is one of the core protocols of standards-based internetworking methods in the Internet and other packet-switched networks. ...

routing protocols, Zebra also supports

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communication protocol, communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic ...

routing protocols. Zebra provided a high quality, multi server routing engine. Zebra has an interactive user interface for each routing protocol and supports common client commands. Due to this design, new protocol daemons can be easily added. Zebra library can also be used as a program's client user interface. Zebra is distributed under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

History

The idea for Zebra originally came from Kunihiro Ishiguro, after he realized the need for quality routing software. While working at an

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non ...

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

between

British Telecom BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

and

Marubeni (, OSE: 8002, NSE: 8002) is a '' sōgō shōsha'' (general trading company) headquartered in Otemachi, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the largest ''sogo shosha'' and has leading market shares in cereal and paper pulp trading as wel ...

, Ishiguro encountered

venture capitalist Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

Yoshinari Yoshikawa. Yoshinari Yoshikawa shared Ishiguro's vision for a new routing engine and they combined resources to create the world's first routing engine software. The resulting entity, known as the Zebra Project, was started in 1996. Ishiguro and Yoshikawa led the IP Infusion company and market a commercial version of Zebra, known as "ZebOS". This ZebOS is being used in networking products, such as FortiOS and the Citrix NetScaler. Citrix, "The NetScaler routing suite is based on ZebOS, the commercial version of GNU Zebra.", http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/ns-system-10-map/ns-nw-iprouting-config-dyna-rout-con.html The official website announced that "Zebra has been decommissioned". Since its last release (version 0.95) in 2005-09-08, development of Zebra stopped. A new project emerged as the unofficial successor of Zebra:

Quagga The quagga ( or ) (''Equus quagga quagga'') is an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra that was endemic to South Africa until it was hunted to extinction in the late 19th century. It was long thought to be a distinct species, but mtDNA ...

References

External links

Official website
* {{GNU Free routing software

Zebra Zebras (, ) (subgenus ''Hippotigris'') are African equines with distinctive black-and-white striped coats. There are three living species: Grévy's zebra (''Equus grevyi''), the plains zebra (''E. quagga''), and the mountain zebra (''E. ...

History

See also

References

External links