FastNetMon is collaborating with NLnet Labs to advance the development of Rotonda, an open source routing platform designed for high-performance routing data processing.
The collaboration focuses on expanding Rotonda into a fully functional BGP daemon with BGP Flow Spec support, enabling new capabilities for routing automation, traffic filtering, and network security applications.
Functionality developed through this collaboration will be delivered on a rolling basis through upcoming Rotonda releases and will be integrated into the main Rotonda codebase as open source.
Advancing Rotonda’s BGP capabilities
Rotonda is a modern routing platform built in Rust and designed to efficiently process large volumes of routing data. Through this collaboration, FastNetMon and NLnet Labs are working together to extend Rotonda’s capabilities in several key areas of BGP functionality.
Development efforts include improvements such as:
- Add Path capability, enabling processing and storage of BGP updates with path identifiers
- BGP message creation, allowing Rotonda to generate BGP UPDATE announcements and withdrawals programmatically
- Advanced RIB inspection, providing high-throughput interfaces for querying routing information
- Detailed BGP session visibility, including peer capabilities and session state
Together, these capabilities move Rotonda closer to operating as a fully functional BGP daemon suitable for integration into routing automation and monitoring workflows.
Introducing Flow Spec support
A key area of collaboration is the addition of BGP Flow Spec functionality to Rotonda.
Flow Spec allows operators to distribute traffic filtering rules using BGP, enabling networks to respond rapidly to unwanted traffic patterns and security incidents.
Within Rotonda, Flow Spec rules can be parsed, processed, and stored within dedicated routing tables. Future development will further expand programmability and automation through Rotonda’s scripting capabilities.
This functionality can support use cases such as automated traffic filtering and DDoS mitigation workflows, where Flow Spec rules are distributed across networks to block or rate-limit malicious traffic.
“Rotonda provides a powerful foundation for working with routing data, and this collaboration helps move it closer to a full BGP daemon with Flow Spec support,” said Pavel Odintsov, founder of FastNetMon.
Open source collaboration
All features developed through this collaboration will be released as open source and integrated into the Rotonda project.
The Rotonda application is available under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, while supporting libraries are released under the BSD 3-Clause license. This ensures that improvements funded through this collaboration remain available to the broader networking community.
FastNetMon looks forward to continuing its collaboration with NLnet Labs and contributing to the development of high-performance open source infrastructure for routing and network security.
“We’re pleased to collaborate with FastNetMon to further develop Rotonda and expand its capabilities,” said a Jasper den Hertog, Rotonda developer at NLnet Labs. “Partnerships like this help accelerate development while ensuring the technology remains open and available to the networking community.”
