Agreed… However… Linux has a bunch of different possible ways to administer all of this stuff. The most comprehensive CLI mechanism is iproute2 (the “ip” command and some related constructs). The most comprehensive and capable persistent configuration database mechanism is systemd-networkd. Other persistent mechanisms include: Netplan (YAML based configurations that now days mostly get parsed into systemd-networkd files and then executed). Debian Traditional (the /etc/network/interfaces file and/or interfaces.d directory, ifup/ifdown/etc.) Lacks many features, but most can be worked around with iproute2 shell commands added to triggers in the file. NetworkManager (semi-capable, but any capabilities it lacks are just hard to cope with). My strong recommendation is take the time to learn systemd-networkd and use it. It’s a bit of a pain and some of the syntax can be arcane and frustrating. It’s also annoying the way it dithers the configuration for a given interface across a multitude of files in some cases. However, when I think the obvious corner cases through and consider the alternatives, I usually find myself realizing that they’ve probably made as good a choice as any for what needs to be done. Overall, it’s a pretty comprehensive interface and provides good logs for troubleshooting in most circumstances. Owen
On Mar 18, 2026, at 11:50, Brandon Martin via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
On 3/17/26 23:08, Raymond Burkholder via NANOG wrote:
Linux VRF is. Plus EBGP and VxLAN and MPBGP and EVPN.
Linux also has a lot of options aside from VRF that can be useful. It has robust policy routing as well as full-on network namespaces, so you have both a lighter option and a heavyweight but incredibly flexible option and all without resorting to full virtualization and the performance and administration hassles that can come with it.
Since none are tied directly to signaling, you can also signal any of those three however you like assuming you can find a way to tie it into your routing daemon. That's usually impractical with policy routing, but VRFs and especially network namespaces (where you're just going to be running multiple routing daemon instances by design) give lots of options.
I'm not aware of any "routing" platforms that provide that level of flexibility and especially without getting absurdly complicated to configure since they, by design, try to centralize everything into a single configuration database (though JunOS's config format is very nice, here).
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