[erlang-questions] Switching and Routing protocols

[Sargun Dhillon]

Kind of funny that you're asking this. I''ve been working on a BGPd in
Erlang/OTP for a while. Erlang is perfectly suitable, if not optimal
for such tasks. The issue with Layer 2 protocols is that they are
typically implemented at the hardware level as they directly affect
layer upper layer latency. Additionally, they are on tiny, embedded
devices. Layer 3 protocols are heavily multithreaded, and require
reliability. The Erlang "let it fail" approach doesn't work -the
greatest- here, but with a few violations of the "let it fail"
protocol Erlang is great. Regarding OSPFd/RIP (other (broad/multi)cast
IGPs) the gen_udp module doesn't implement multicast last time I
checked. Unless this has changed you'll need to write an external port
driver for this purpose.
We'd love to hear your attempts at routing protocols in Erlang.

2008/8/28 Balu Balasubramanian <avbalu@REDACTED>:
> Hi,
>
> Is Erlang a suitable language for implementing L2/3 control protocols like
> Spanning Tree, OSPF etc.?
>
> Has anyone tried it? Any thoughts? Insights?
>
> Thanks
> Balu
>
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