NFWare is the Official Contributor to FRRouting Project

NFWare has become an active participant and an official contributor to the FRR, today's most promising open-source routing project. FRRouting is a free IP protocol suite. Many companies: ISPs, SaaS, web 2.0 businesses, hyper-scale services, and Fortune 500 private clouds -- use it as a fundamental part of their networks.

NFWare has been actively involved in developing new features and bug fixes, working closely with the open and highly collaborative community. The contributors made FRR one of the fastest-growing and reliable open-source network stacks.

FRRouting is a free routing protocol suite for native Linux and Unix platforms. It can work as a dedicated solution that brings Layer 3 connectivity from switches to hosts, virtual machines, and containers; advertises network service endpoints; provides internet access and peering routers. For the NFV use case, it is also a router that works as a virtual network function.

On the other hand, it also gives developers a ready-to-use toolset that can be a fundamental routing part of other networking solutions. It speeds up the time to launch new products, as the engineers don't need to develop routing from scratch.

Today's protocol suite includes BGP, OSPF, RIP, IS-IS, PIM, LDP, BFD, Babel, PBR, OpenFabric, and VRRP with alpha support for EIGRP and NHRP. Although the list is already quite comprehensive, the project doesn't plan to stop. A busy roadmap includes some advanced features, such as full YANG-based data modelling, NETCONF/RESTCONF support, and more.

Today, FRR has become increasingly popular as a core component of Ethernet switches and other networking solutions. It is also widely used in other open-source projects: Microsoft included it as part of its SONIC network operating system, and Amazon uses FRR in its network software DENT.

Formed from Quagga, another open-source routing software, it was introduced in 2016. The project receives tremendous support with over 15,000 bug fixes from more than 400 individual contributors. Several leading network solutions providers: Cumulus Networks (acquired by NVIDIA), VMware, NFWare, 128 technology, 6Wind, Big Switch, Volta networks, and many others -- combine their efforts to enhance the feature set constantly, as well as contribute to bug fixes.

There are several routing open source initiatives, but FRR is one of the most promising projects today. It brings cost-efficiency, reliability and provides vendors with opportunities to launch new networking products faster.

NFWare included FRR in its CGNAT solution from 2021 and plans to continue contributing to the project like its peers from the FRRouting fast-growing community.

Given the popularity and reliability, it is not surprising that we will see FRR be a part of more and more new products created worldwide: from software routers and network operating systems to firewalls.