Hello Paul, I'm afraid that this topic may be out of BIRD's primary scope. If I assess your needs correctly, this is maybe more to do in NetworkManager or something like that, or maybe even in-kernel. But I may be wrong. If you could describe what exactly you're trying to achieve (even off-list of you don't like publishing the details now), I may try to give you a direct pointer where to look at, or help you find out whether this task matches your skills. Also there may be some collab possibility between us and you, if we conclude that this thing actually fits into our needs as well. Looking forward to hearing back from you. Maria On 2024-02-19 12:08, Mccherry, Paul (Postgraduate Researcher) wrote:

I am a Phd Researcher at Lancaster university researching the security of the UK Internet infrastructure.

I need to add support for a proposed experimental IPv6 Hop By Hop Extension Header to a routers Kernel to test my theories. I am more a server/network engineer and researcher than I am a programmer but I am able to write in Python and use scripting languages. Can anyone recommend tools and Router emulation software where one could add support for an experimental IPv6 Hop By Hop Extension Header in order to test the methodology ? The new extension header requires changes to the IFindex table (an additional field) and a new ACL to make routing decisions on the new field within the IFindex table. It also will need to provide the capability of allowing an installation engineer to make changes to this field on initial setup.

If Bird is unable to provide such a testbed, can anyone recommend another solution. ? However, I do think a capability to provide researchers with an easy method to test new IPv6 Extension headers would be really useful considering the takeup of IPv6 and the future of the internet.

-- Maria Matejka (she/her) | BIRD Team Leader | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.