Introduction

Welcome to the User Guide for Flock Networks IP Routing Suite 21.1.

The Flock Networks IP Routing Suite will run on any version of Linux, including the SONiC NOS.

At Flock Networks we believe networks should be fast, secure and uniform.

• Performance is achieved by:
  • Running in a single operating system process, with each component having its own thread. This makes the communication between components dramatically faster.
  • Using a thread pool in each component to achieve linear scale vs available CPU cores.
  • Keeping the entire implementation lock free. This means each work flow can progress unhindered by any external interruptions.
  • Handling network protocol updates in batches. This means route calculation can be performed less frequently, and keeps the CPU's instruction cache hot.
  • Only using data structures that are CPU data cache friendly.
• Security is achieved by the routing suite being exclusively written in the Rust programming language. Rust has a similar performance to C / C++, but is memory safe at compile time.
• Uniformity is achieved by having a similar configuration across all routers in the network. Device specific and in particular interface specific configuration is to be avoided.

If you have any questions, suggestions or issues, please email support@flocknetworks.com.