About

LISA stands for LInux Switching Appliance. It's a project that aims at building a network multilayer switching device that runs on a (slightly modified) PC hardware architecture running Linux.

The device should be able to perform Layer 2 and Layer 3 packet switching and run dynamic routing protocols such as OSPF and BGP. The configuration and operation command line interface will be similar to Cisco's IOS.

The project will not compete with Cisco (we could not do that anyway :P) but should provide a cost-effective advanced-featured solution for small networks.

The project consists of two major components:

• Linux Multilayer Switch - The very heart of the LISA project. It's a Linux kernel module that performs Layer 2 switching and implements virtual interfaces for inter-vlan routing.
• Command Line Interface - A Cisco-like command line interface that works closely with the kernel module to configure and control the switching process. For further details, please have a look at the CLI page.

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