[Babel-users] Babel with VPP

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> Babeld does have (most of) the knobs I think you'd need but it's just not
> suitable for 24/7 operation outside of toy networks without major rework
> (sorry Juliusz!).

No need to apologise.  Babeld is the work of dozens of interns over ten
years.  I've done some work to clean up the code, but there's much more
left to do.

I intend to keep maintaining babeld, since having two independent
implementations keeps the protocol designers honest, but, just like you,
I recommend BIRD for use in production.

> 2) When a prefix is no longer reachable babel will insert an unreachable
> route for it until some timeout expires. I don't recall the details off
> hand but I'm sure Juliusz will jump in here ;)

That's described in RFC 8966 Section 2.8.  It's required if you want Babel
to be completely loop-less, without this it will ocasionally cause
short-lived loops.

If you're running Babel on a mostly lossless network, then you want this
to be disabled.  If you're running a wireless mesh network, you want it
enabled.  Obviously, babeld's default is not right for you.

> BIRD's babel implementation is just dandy from a quality perspective

Yeah, it was written by just one competent developer (Toke), not by dozens
of undergrads :-)

-- Juliusz