NetDEF Takes Ownership of The OpenSourceRouting Project

The Network Device Education Foundation (NetDEF) recently took over ownership of the OpenSourceRouting (OSR) project started at ISC. With the project came the charter of sponsoring a maintainer, testing, developing and bug fixing for Quagga, an open source routing stack.

Martin Winter, co-founder of NetDEF recently gave an exclusive interview to Roy Chua of SDNCentral about OSR.

We at NetDEF are happy to have the opportunity to continue this important project.

Excerpt from the interview with SDNCentral:

Winter: Quagga is an open-source-licensed (GPLv2) routing stack. It is an implementation of IP routing protocols such as RIP, RIPng, OSPF and ISIS. I want to make the clear distinction of a routing stack compared to a full router implementation. For a full router, you need traffic forwarding and a routing stack. Quagga only implements the routing protocols. It can be run with Linux and can use the standard Linux kernel for forwarding (as software router), or it could be connected to a distributed forwarding platform using OpenFlow or any other open or proprietary interface (as a high-end distributed router). It could also be used just for the routing protocols to interface with off-the shelf routers to receive and announce routes.

Quagga evolved out of the Zebra routing code approximately 10 years ago. Zebra, as a public project, is abandoned, but it continues as a commercial solution with IP Infusion as ZebOS.