OpenBGPD, also known as OpenBSD Border Gateway Protocol Daemon, is a

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

software program that allows general purpose

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

s to be used as routers. It is a

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

system

daemon A demon is a malevolent supernatural being, evil spirit or fiend in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology and folklore. Demon, daemon or dæmon may also refer to: Entertainment Fictional entities * Daemon (G.I. Joe), a character ...

that provides a free, open-source implementation of the

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

version 4. This allows a machine to exchange routes with other systems that speak BGP. OpenBSD Border Gateway Protocol Daemon is developed by Henning Brauer, Peter Hessler, and Claudio Jeker as part of the

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

project. OpenOSPFD, developed by Esben Nørby, is a companion daemon of OpenBGPD that implements the

Open Shortest Path First 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 syste ...

protocol. The suite was developed as an alternative to packages such as

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 ...

, a

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

-focused routing suite which is licensed under the GPL and does not meet the project's requirements and quality standards.A Secure BGP Implementation
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Goals

The design goals of OpenBSD Border Gateway Protocol Daemon include being secure ( non-exploitable), reliable, and lean enough for most users, both in size and memory usage. The configuration language should be both powerful and easy to use. It must also be able to quickly handle hundreds of thousands of table entries in a

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...

-efficient way.

Design

OpenBGPD consists of a

parent process In computing, a parent process is a process that has created one or more child processes. Unix-like systems In Unix-like operating systems, every process except (the swapper) is created when another process executes the fork() system call. T ...

, and two

child process A child process (CP) in computing is a process created by another process (the parent process). This technique pertains to multitasking operating systems, and is sometimes called a subprocess or traditionally a subtask. There are two major proce ...

es: the Route Decision Engine (RDE), and the Session Engine (SE). The parent process is the only part that doesn't drop privileges; the others do, in the interest of non-exploitability. The parent process cannot drop privileges, because it needs to update the

routing table In computer networking, a routing table, or routing information base (RIB), is a data table stored in a router or a network host that lists the routes to particular network destinations, and in some cases, metrics (distances) associated wi ...

and it has to run on a privileged port (179).

References

External links

* *
A paper explaining OpenBGPD by Henning Brauer

Hasso Tepper's work on OpenBGPD on Debian GNU/Linux

Routing with OpenBSD using OpenOSPFD and OpenBGPD
- Paper (pdf) by Claudio Jeker (2006) BSD software BGPD Free routing software OpenBSD software using the ISC license {{network-software-stub

Goals

Design

See also

References

External links