Julien Fortin

Existing tools for network interface configuration have several shortcomings when applied to network switches. These include the lack of ability to handle interface dependencies, incremental updates to interface configuration without disruption, and interface configuration validation. The lack of such functionality increases operational burden. We introduced ifupdown2, a new network interface manager for Linux.

ifupdown2 solves these problems through an implementation based on dependency graphs. The purpose of this talk is to briefly describes network interface configuration on Linux, the problems that arise when configuring a network switch and how ifupdown2 solves these problems and increases operational efficiencies overall.

This talk mostly targets networking people. We also want to encourage people to contribute to this project by writing their own addon module to support new protocols (e.g. B.A.T.M.A.N.) : https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/ifupdown2

https://packages.debian.org/sid/ifupdown2

Via this talk we also want to give a general up-date on the project. What we added over the year (e.g. VRF, etc.) and what is coming (e.g. better netlink support, better performance..etc.)