#
# $XORP: xorp/fea/README,v 1.7 2004/06/30 16:42:12 mjh Exp $
#

Forwarding Engine Abstraction
=============================

The FEA is intended to fulfill several roles:

    1) it manages network interfaces.

    2) it reports changes to network interface configurations.

    3) it manages the forwarding tables of the underlying forwarding plane.

    4) it allows UDP and RAW packets to be sent from network interfaces.

    5) it adds support for multicast routing (see README.mfea for details).

Documentation
=============

The FEA architecture is described in ${XORP}/docs/fea.
For information about the multicast-related MFEA see README.mfea
The MFEA architecture is described in ${XORP}/docs/mfea.

Status
======

Two FEA implementations exist: ``xorp_fea'' and ``xorp_fea_dummy''.
Program ``xorp_fea'' is a generic FEA that contains plug-ins for
various systems.  Currently, it has plug-ins for systems implementing
BSD's routing socket interface, and for Linux's netlink socket
interface.  It has been developed and tested on FreeBSD versions
4.5--4.10, and Linux RedHat-7.2, but it may work on NetBSD and OpenBSD
as well (see ${XORP}/BUILD_NOTES for a complete list of all OS
versions).  Program ``xorp_fea_dummy'' is a functional FEA substitute
for other systems.  Neither FEA version is extensively tested.
