prefer ipv6 examples in the documentation
Hi everybody! In spite or recent Maria's activity, I decided to checked the BIRD documentation and found many examples where legacy :) IPv4 addresses are used. My proposal is to preferably use IPv6 examples in the documentation. I tried to spot the places where IPv4 examples can be replaced or complemented by IPv6 examples, and prepared a patch with possible changes. Regards, Alexander Zubkov
Good morning, I've to say I love this. I think this is the really the right place & right time, I am often frustrated with educational material still referencing IPv4 primarily. I personally would really welcome this to be accepted. Related topic: There is actually one more item to look for and maybe it's literally just one item: what are the real world requirements for IPv4 in bird / a router? What I know for sure and probably everyone knows is that the router ID is a 32 bit integer, in practice the (public-ish) IPv4 address of the router. While technically it can be anything (let's say 1 or 2 or 42), it is being sent to the BGP peer: k8s_p5_1_6 BGP --- up 2025-06-01 Established BGP state: Established Neighbor address: 2a0a:e5c0::62be:b4ff:fe08:49e1 Neighbor AS: 65533 Local AS: 199553 Neighbor ID: 15.108.225.116 ... I know this is out of scope for a change just in bird, but it might be worth discussing on how to treat the router ID, because with the notion of "it's unique / official address", every router out there still requires at least one IPv4 address, which is at minimum very cumbersome. </related topic> Hope the patch makes it into the documentation, as bird is one of the best pieces of routing software and having an IPv6 first documentation would certainly benefit it. Greetings from Seoul, Nico Alexander Zubkov via Bird-users <bird-users@network.cz> writes:
Hi everybody!
In spite or recent Maria's activity, I decided to checked the BIRD documentation and found many examples where legacy :) IPv4 addresses are used. My proposal is to preferably use IPv6 examples in the documentation. I tried to spot the places where IPv4 examples can be replaced or complemented by IPv6 examples, and prepared a patch with possible changes.
Regards, Alexander Zubkov
-- Sustainable and modern Infrastructures by ungleich.ch
Hi all, Sorry, it looks like I forgot to attach the patch itself in my first message. Regards, Alexander On Thu, Jun 5, 2025 at 4:48 AM Nico Schottelius < nico.schottelius@ungleich.ch> wrote:
Good morning,
I've to say I love this. I think this is the really the right place & right time, I am often frustrated with educational material still referencing IPv4 primarily.
I personally would really welcome this to be accepted.
Related topic:
There is actually one more item to look for and maybe it's literally just one item: what are the real world requirements for IPv4 in bird / a router?
What I know for sure and probably everyone knows is that the router ID is a 32 bit integer, in practice the (public-ish) IPv4 address of the router. While technically it can be anything (let's say 1 or 2 or 42), it is being sent to the BGP peer:
k8s_p5_1_6 BGP --- up 2025-06-01 Established BGP state: Established Neighbor address: 2a0a:e5c0::62be:b4ff:fe08:49e1 Neighbor AS: 65533 Local AS: 199553 Neighbor ID: 15.108.225.116 ...
I know this is out of scope for a change just in bird, but it might be worth discussing on how to treat the router ID, because with the notion of "it's unique / official address", every router out there still requires at least one IPv4 address, which is at minimum very cumbersome.
</related topic>
Hope the patch makes it into the documentation, as bird is one of the best pieces of routing software and having an IPv6 first documentation would certainly benefit it.
Greetings from Seoul,
Nico
Alexander Zubkov via Bird-users <bird-users@network.cz> writes:
Hi everybody!
In spite or recent Maria's activity, I decided to checked the BIRD documentation and found many examples where legacy :) IPv4 addresses are used. My proposal is to preferably use IPv6 examples in the documentation. I tried to spot the places where IPv4 examples can be replaced or complemented by IPv6 examples, and prepared a patch with possible changes.
Regards, Alexander Zubkov
-- Sustainable and modern Infrastructures by ungleich.ch
Hello Alexander , On Wed, 4 Jun 2025, Alexander Zubkov via Bird-users wrote:
Hi everybody!
In spite or recent Maria's activity, I decided to checked the BIRD documentation and found many examples where legacy :) IPv4 addresses are used. My proposal is to preferably use IPv6 examples in the documentation. I tried to spot the places where IPv4 examples can be replaced or complemented by IPv6 examples, and prepared a patch with possible changes.
Regards, Alexander Zubkov
While the rest of the world maybe in a V^ world , My little network still uses V4 & the Documents should continue to also have V4 examples . Maybe seperated examples V4 & V6 . Tia , JimL -- +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | James W. Laferriere | System Techniques | Give me VMS | | Network & System Engineer | 3237 Holden Road | Give me Linux | | jiml@system-techniques.com | Fairbanks, AK. 99709 | only on AXP | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
IMHO, I believe that the examples should consider v4 and v6. But there is something more important than that! The examples should be made so that the routing policies apply simultaneously to both Address-Families. I honestly feel disgusted when I have to operate a routing engine that does not allow me to use the same route-maps (or equivalent) for both address-families. P.S.: Hey Huawei, how are you doing? I think that using the same routing-policies, regardless of address-families, should be BCOP. It is because of the lack of this as a standard that aberrations such as: "In IPv4 the path is BabaNet->ThatNet, and in IPv6 it is BabaNet->TutuNet->FifiNet>ThatNet." In the day-to-day work of network operators, they end up having to take emergency actions to deal with a specific need, and IPv4 routing policies being separated from IPv6 routing policies, they end up only putting out the fire in IPv4 and IPv6 ends up forgotten. Em qui., 5 de jun. de 2025 às 19:13, babydr DBA James W. Laferriere < babydr@baby-dragons.com> escreveu:
Hello Alexander ,
On Wed, 4 Jun 2025, Alexander Zubkov via Bird-users wrote:
Hi everybody!
In spite or recent Maria's activity, I decided to checked the BIRD documentation and found many examples where legacy :) IPv4 addresses are used. My proposal is to preferably use IPv6 examples in the documentation. I tried to spot the places where IPv4 examples can be replaced or complemented by IPv6 examples, and prepared a patch with possible changes.
Regards, Alexander Zubkov
While the rest of the world maybe in a V^ world , My little network still uses V4 & the Documents should continue to also have V4 examples . Maybe seperated examples V4 & V6 .
Tia , JimL
-- +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | James W. Laferriere | System Techniques | Give me VMS | | Network & System Engineer | 3237 Holden Road | Give me Linux | | jiml@system-techniques.com | Fairbanks, AK. 99709 | only on AXP | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
-- Douglas Fernando Fischer Engº de Controle e Automação
participants (4)
-
Alexander Zubkov -
babydr DBA James W. Laferriere -
Douglas Fischer -
Nico Schottelius