Welcome, gentle reader.
This document hopes to enlighten you on how to do more with Linux 2.2/2.4 routing. Unbeknownst to most users, you already run tools which allow you to do spectacular things. Commands like route and ifconfig are actually very thin wrappers for the very powerful iproute2 infrastructure.
I hope that this HOWTO will become as readable as the ones by Rusty Russell of (amongst other things) netfilter fame.
You can always reach us by writing to the HOWTO team. However, please consider posting to the mailing list (see the relevant section) if you have questions which are not directly related to this HOWTO. We are no free helpdesk, but we often will answer questions asked on the list.
Before losing your way in this HOWTO, if all you want to do is simple traffic shaping, skip everything and head to the Other possibilities chapter, and read about CBQ.init.
This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
In short, if your STM-64 backbone breaks down and distributes pornography to your most esteemed customers - it's never our fault. Sorry.
Copyright (c) 2002 by bert hubert, Gregory Maxwell, Martijn van Oosterhout, Remco van Mook, Paul B. Schroeder and others. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
Please freely copy and distribute (sell or give away) this document in any format. It's requested that corrections and/or comments be fowarded to the document maintainer.
It is also requested that if you publish this HOWTO in hardcopy that you send the authors some samples for "review purposes" :-)