bridged

If you're looking for a user-friendly way to use in-kernel bridge code in Linux, bridged might be your answer. This software is an excellent alternative as it uses AVL trees to speed up lookups. While it only offers basic functionality at the moment, the developer has plans to add more advanced features, such as access-lists (filtering), SNMP management, and a telnet console based on interest.

One thing to note is that bridged doesn't use autoconf/automake yet. So, if you want to change paths it installs itself to, you need to edit Makefile directly. To compile bridged, you'll need flex and the GNU avl library (you can download it from its website). To install it, run 'make' and then 'make install'.

By default, bridged looks for its configuration in /etc/bridged.conf, but you can override this by using the '-c' argument on the command-line. If you're wondering how to set up the configuration file, it's quite simple. A typical configuration file for making a bridge between two interfaces looks like this:

bridge-group 0
interface eth0
interface eth1

Do note that you'll need the GNU avl library to use bridged. If you're compiling from source RPM, you'll also need the devel RPM.

As for the latest release, aging MAC address table entries and purging MAC address table functionalities have been implemented. The config file now recognizes "aging", "entries", and "purge-batch," however, there's no functionality implemented yet.