Advanced Linux Routing and Traffic Control: Introduction to Iproute2

Hopefully this document will help and inspire you to better understand the linxs2.2/2.4 route. What most users do not know is that the tools you use can actually do quite a lot of work. Route and Ifconfig, for example, actually secretly invoke the very powerful Iproute 2 underlying basic functionality.

What Linux can do for you

A small list:

• Control the bandwidth of a computer
• Control the bandwidth to a computer
• Help you share your bandwidth fairly
• Protect your network from Dos attacks
• Protect the Internet from attacks by your customers
• Make multiple servers virtual into one, perform http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13996.html "> load balancing or increase availability
• Restrict access to your computer
• Restrict access to certain hosts by your users
• Based on user account (yes!) , MAC address, source IP address, port, service type, time, or content.

Nowadays, many people do not use these advanced features. There are many reasons for this. For example, the documentation provided is too lengthy and not easy to access, and traffic control is not even archived at all.

1 Why use Iproute2?

Most Linux distributions and most Unix now use the old Arp, ifconfig, and Route commands. Although these tools work, they appear to be somewhat outdated in Linux2.2 and later versions of the kernel. For example, the GRE tunnel is now a major concept of routing, but it cannot be configured with these tools.
With Iproute2, the tunnel configuration is fully integrated with the other parts.

The 2.2 and later Linux kernel contains a thoroughly redesigned network subsystem. These new codes give Linux a functional and performance advantage in the competition for the operating system. In fact, new Linux routing, filtering, and sorting code, from the functional and performance is not weak from the existing professional routers, firewalls and traffic shaping products.

As new network concepts are proposed, people are tinkering with existing operating system systems to implement them. This stubborn behavior leads to the strange behavior in the network code, which is a bit like human language. In the past, Linux has imitated many of SunOS's processing methods, which are not ideal.

The new system is likely to be more articulate and functional than any previous version of Linux.

2 Iproute2 Overview

Linux has a mature bandwidth supply system, known as traffic control. The system supports a variety of ways to classify, sort, share, and restrict access to traffic.

We will begin with a brief overview of Iproute2 possibilities.

3 Prerequisites

You should verify that the user-level Configuration tool is installed. The name of the bag is called "Iproute" in Redhat and Debian, and can be found in this place:

Ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/iproute2-2.2.4-now-ss??????. tar.gz

You can also try to find the latest version here (ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/iproute2-current.tar.gz).

Some parts of Iproute require you to open some specific kernel options. It should be noted that the default kernel in RedHat6.2 and all of its previous distributions does not carry the vast majority of the functionality required for flow control.

Redhat 7.2 Satisfies all requirements by default.

Also, make sure your kernel supports NetLink, Iproute2 needs it.