Olivier Cochard-Labbé, creator of the FreeNAS distribution, has introduced the release of the specialized BSD Router Project 2.0 (BSDRP), notable for updating the codebase to the under-development branch of FreeBSD 16. This distribution is designed for creating compact software routers that support routing protocols such as RIP, OSPF, BGP, and PIM. Management is done via command-line mode through a CLI interface resembling Cisco IOS. The distribution is available in builds for x86_64 and ARM64 architectures (compressed installation image size ~340 MB).
Key features of the distribution:
- Included are two packages implementing routing protocols: FRRouting (a fork of Quagga) supporting BGP, RIP, RIPng (IPv6), OSPF v2, OSPF v3 (IPv6), ISIS, and BIRD supporting BGP, RIP, RIPng (IPv6), OSPF v2, and OSPF v3 (IPv6).
- The distribution is adapted for the parallel use of multiple isolated routing tables (FIB) tied to real and virtual interfaces.
- SNMP (bsnmp-ucd) can be used for monitoring and management.
- Export of traffic data in the form of Netflow streams is supported.
- To assess network performance, utilities such as NetPIPE, iperf, netblast, netsend, and netreceive are included. For accumulating traffic statistics, ng_netflow is used.
- Support for creating redundant routers from two servers—under normal operation, the load can be distributed between both servers, but in case of failure, the first router can take over the load of the second, and the second router can take over for the first (using active server binding). virtual MAC addresses). This implementation is based on using VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) and CARP (Common Address Redundancy Protocol), implemented using the ucarp package.
- Support for PPTP, PPPoE, and L2TP through mpd (Multi-link PPP daemon).
- Support for bandwidth limitation through IPFW + dummynet or ng_car.
- For Ethernet, support includes working with VLAN (802.1q), link aggregation, and the use of network bridges (802.1w, Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol).
- Monitoring is done using the monit package.
- Support VPN: GRE, GIF, IPSec (IKEv1 and IKEv2 with strongswan), OpenVPN, and Wireguard.
- Support for NAT64 using the tayga daemon and built-in support for IPv6-to-IPv4 tunnels.
- The ability to install additional programs using the pkgng package manager.
- Using dnsmasq as a DHCP server and ssmtp as a mail delivery agent.
- Support for management via SSH, serial port, telnet, and local console. To simplify administration, the package includes the tmux utility (BSD equivalent of screen).
- Boot images are generated based on FreeBSD using scripts from NanoBSD.
- The system update mechanism is based on creating two partitions on the Flash drive: the new version is loaded into the second partition, which becomes active after a reboot, while the other partition waits for the next update (the partitions switch places). If issues are detected with the installed update, it is possible to roll back to the previous state of the system.
- To check the integrity of the system, a sha256 checksum is saved for each file.
In the new release:
- The system environment has been updated to FreeBSD branch 16-HEAD and ports as of September 25, 2025.
- Updated versions of bird 2.17, frr 10.4.1 (including support for Lua scripts), openvpn 2.6.15, strongswan 6.0.1, dnsmasq 2.90, iperf 3.19, lldp 1.0.19, monit 5.35.
- Added support for systems based on the ARM64 architecture.
- The installation image supports booting on both UEFI and BIOS systems. Reinstallation is required for migration from MBR to GPT.
- Transitioned from the Nanobsd toolset to poudriere-image.
- The package includes: net/vpp, flashrom, mstflint, and Mellanox NIC utilities.
- Removed the isc-dhcp44 and dhcprelya packages, with dnsmasq now utilized instead.
Source: opennet.ru
