A company maintaining a dual-licensed Linux distribution for x86-based routers has achieved a new release. Vyatta Community Edition 2.2 (“Camarillo”) features security and flexibility enhancements to the BGP (border gateway protocol) stack, and usability enhancements related to NAT (network address translation) and DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol).

Vyatta's routing stacks are based on Debian, and IPv4/6 routing software from the open source XORP project. They run on x86 hardware only. The commercial versions cost $650 or $900 a year, depending on the level of support, and are also available as community releases supported by a Wiki and four active mailing lists.

Vyatta also resells Intel NICs (network interface cards), Sangoma WAN cards, and Dell server hardware that supports its software. And, in the time-honored tradition of Linux distributors everywhere, it sells T-shirts and baseball caps. The company is run by former MontaVista VP Kelly Herrell.

Vyatta moved to a Debian-based foundation in March, when it achieved its second major release. Thus, users of the community-supported Vyatta distribution can easily upgrade to Camarillo by typing:

apt-get update
apt-get install vyatta-base
full-upgrade

The non-standard “full-upgrade” command apparently installs a number of new packages added to the baseline distribution since the 2.0 release.

Changes in the new release, as listed by Vyatta, include:

• BGP enhancements
  • Per-peer BGP routing policies: import and export routing policies can now be applied to individual BGP peers as well as at the BGP protocol level.
  • MD5 authentication for BGP: an MD5 key can now be specified to authenticate a BGP peer
• NAT usability enhancements
  • The “type” and “translation-type” options have been consolidated into a single attribute for ease of configuration
  • The “inside-address” and “outside-address” options can now be configured with address ranges
  • Port translation is now supported
  • The Configuration Guide has been enhanced with a greater number and variety of examples for NAT
• Improvements to DHCP server and DHCP relay
  • Bugfixes and usability improvements to the DHCP server configuration and DHCP relay configuration features
  • DHCP server and DHCP relay configuration options have been enhanced to improve usability
  • New “show version” options list packages that have been updated since the last upgrade, or that have been added, deleted, or upgraded from the baseline
• Over 100 bugfixes

More details about the release can be found in Vyatta's Community Wiki, here.

 
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