XORP is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. IP ...

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 suite originally designed at the

International Computer Science Institute The International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) is an independent, non-profit research organization located in Berkeley, California, United States. Since its founding in 1988, ICSI has maintained an affiliation agreement with the University ...

in Berkeley, California. The name is derived from ''eXtensible Open Router Platform''. It supports OSPF, BGP, RIP, PIM, IGMP, OLSR. The product is designed from principles of software modularity and extensibility and aims at exhibiting stability and providing feature requirements for production use while also supporting networking research. The development project was founded by

Mark Handley Mark Handley is a playwright and screenwriter. Personal life In 1977, he and his wife moved to the Pacific Northwest where they lived in isolation in a log cabin that they built themselves. Career He is best known for his play ''Idioglos ...

in 2000. Receiving funding from

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, and the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

, it released its first production software in July 2004. The project was then run by

Atanu Ghosh Atanu Ghosh Ghosh is a National-Award-winning Indian filmmaker, screenwriter, author and teacher. His Bengali film '' Mayurakshi'' (2017) was awarded the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali. His film Shesh Pata, Angshumaner ...

of the

, in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

. In July 2008, the

transferred the XORP technology to a new entity, XORP Inc., a commercial startup founded by the leaders of the opensource project team and backed by Onset Ventures and

Highland Capital Partners Highland Capital Partners is a global venture capital firm with offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco. Highland has raised over $4 billion in committed capital and invested in more than 280 companies, with 47 IPOs and 134 acqui ...

. In February 2010, XORP Inc. was wound up, a victim of the recession. However the open source project continued, with the servers based at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

. In March 2011, Ben Greear became the project maintainer and the www.xorp.org server is now hosted by Candela Technologies. The XORP codebase consists of around 670,000 lines of

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and is developed primarily on

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 ...

, but supported on

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

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 ...

DragonFlyBSD DragonFly BSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system forked from FreeBSD 4.8. Matthew Dillon, an Amiga developer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and FreeBSD developer between 1994 and 2003, began working on DragonFly BSD in Jun ...

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

. Support for XORP on

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was recently re-added to the development tree. XORP is available for download as a

Live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete booting, bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than lo ...

or as source code via the project's homepage. The software suite was selected commercially as the routing platform for the

Vyatta Vyatta is a software-based virtual router, virtual firewall and VPN product for Internet Protocol networks (IPv4 and IPv6). A free download of Vyatta has been available since March 2006. The system is a specialized Debian-based Linux distributi ...

line of products in its early releases, but later has been replaced with

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Routing features

As of 2009, the project supports the following routing protocols: *Static routing *

Routing Information Protocol The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is one of the oldest distance-vector routing protocols which employs the hop count as a routing metric. RIP prevents routing loops by implementing a limit on the number of hops allowed in a path from so ...

(RIP and RIPng): ** (RIP version 2) ** (RIP-2 MD5 Authentication) ** (RIPng for IPv6) *

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 ...

: ** (A Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4)) ** (Capabilities Advertisement with BGP-4) ** (Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4) ** (Use of BGP-4 Multiprotocol Extensions for IPv6 Inter-Domain Routing) ** (BGP Communities Attribute) ** (BGP Route Reflection - An Alternative to Full Mesh IBGP) ** (Autonomous System Confederations for BGP) ** (BGP Route Flap Damping) ** (BGP Support for Four-octet AS Number Space) ** (Definitions of Managed Objects for the Fourth Version of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP-4) using SMIv2) *

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 ...

version 2 (OSPFv2) and version 3 (OSPFv3): ** (OSPF Version 2) ** (The OSPF Not-So-Stubby Area (NSSA) Option) ** (OSPF for IPv6) *

PIM Sparse Mode 400px, Example of a multicast network architecture Protocol-Independent Multicast (PIM) is a family of multicast routing protocols for Internet Protocol (IP) networks that provide one-to-many and many-to-many distribution of data over a LAN, ...

(PIM-SM): ** ** *

IGMP The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is a communications protocol used by hosts and adjacent routers on IPv4 networks to establish multicast group memberships. IGMP is an integral part of IP multicast and allows the network to direct m ...

v1, v2, and v3: ** (Internet Group Management Protocol, Version 2) ** (Internet Group Management Protocol, Version 3) *

Multicast Listener Discovery Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) is a component of the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) suite. MLD is used by IPv6 routers for discovering multicast listeners on a directly attached link, much like Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is ...

(MLD v1 and v2): ** (Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) for IPv6) ** (Multicast Listener Discovery Version 2 (MLDv2) for IPv6) *

Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol The Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) is a computer networking protocol that provides for automatic assignment of available Internet Protocol (IP) routers to participating hosts. This increases the availability and reliability of routin ...

(VRRP v2): **

User interface

XORP provides a command line interface for interactive configuration and operation monitoring. The interface is implemented as a distinct application called ''xorpsh'', that may be invoked by multiple users simultaneously. It interacts via

interprocess communication In computer science, interprocess communication (IPC) is the sharing of data between running processes in a computer system. Mechanisms for IPC may be provided by an operating system. Applications which use IPC are often categorized as clients ...

with the router core modules. The command line language is modelled after that of

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including Router (computing), routers, Network switch, switches, network management so ...

JunOS Junos OS (also known as Juniper Junos, Junos and JUNOS) is a FreeBSD-based, and later also Linux-based, network operating system used in Juniper Networks routing, switching and security devices. Versions Junos OS was first made available on 7 ...

platform.

References

External links

Official website

SourceForge website

Release Notes

Slashdot discussion
{{Routing software Free routing software

Routing features

User interface

See also

References

External links