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# VyOS — Full LLM Reference

> VyOS is an open source network operating system (NOS) based on Debian GNU/Linux. It provides a comprehensive suite of software-based networking capabilities including routing, firewall, VPN, traffic shaping, and network automation. VyOS is developed and maintained by Sentrium S.L. and a global community of contributors.

## About VyOS

VyOS was founded in 2013 as a community fork of Vyatta Core after Brocade discontinued the community edition. It has since evolved into a production-grade enterprise networking platform used by ISPs, cloud providers, enterprises, and service providers globally.

The platform is available under a dual model:
- **Community/Rolling Release**: Free, updated frequently, suitable for development and testing
- **LTS Subscription**: Stable long-term support releases with professional support for production use

Current LTS version: 1.4 (Sagitta). Rolling release tracks nightly builds.

## Core Capabilities

### Routing Protocols
- **BGP**: IPv4 and IPv6, MPLS/BGP, Route Reflectors, BGP communities, route maps, prefix lists, RPKI validation
- **OSPF**: OSPFv2 (IPv4) and OSPFv3 (IPv6), multi-area, stub/NSSA areas
- **IS-IS**: IPv4 and IPv6, multi-topology
- **RIP/RIPng**: Basic distance-vector routing
- **BFD**: Bidirectional Forwarding Detection for fast failover
- **PBR**: Policy-Based Routing
- **Multicast**: IGMP, PIM-SM, PIM-SSM, MSDP

### VPN and Tunneling
- **IPsec**: IKEv1/IKEv2, site-to-site, remote access, transport/tunnel modes, ESP/AH
- **WireGuard**: Modern high-performance VPN protocol
- **OpenVPN**: Client, server, and site-to-site modes; TCP/UDP
- **L2TP/IPsec**: Legacy remote access VPN
- **SSTP**: SSL-based VPN
- **GRE**: Generic Routing Encapsulation tunnels
- **VXLAN**: Virtual Extensible LAN overlays
- **GENEVE**: Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation
- **VXLAN-GPE**: VXLAN with Generic Protocol Extension

### Firewall
- Zone-based stateful firewall
- IPv4 and IPv6 policy support
- Connection tracking and stateful inspection
- NAT (SNAT, DNAT, masquerade)
- NAT64 and NAT66
- Port forwarding
- Traffic filtering by IP, port, protocol, interface
- nftables-based implementation

### High Availability
- **VRRP**: Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (IPv4 and IPv6)
- Conntrack synchronization for stateful failover
- Dual-stack HA configurations
- Fast failover with BFD integration

### MPLS and Segment Routing
- MPLS LDP
- MPLS RSVP-TE
- SR-MPLS (Segment Routing with MPLS data plane)
- SRv6 (Segment Routing with IPv6 data plane)
- MPLS VPN (L3VPN)
- EVPN/VXLAN with BGP control plane

### Data Center Networking
- EVPN Type-2 (MAC/IP routes), Type-3 (BUM flooding), Type-5 (IP prefix routes)
- VXLAN with EVPN control plane
- Data Center Interconnect (DCI) with EVPN
- BGP unnumbered for fabric routing
- Leaf-spine architecture support

### Service Provider Features
- BNG (Broadband Network Gateway): PPPoE, IPoE, subscriber management, RADIUS, CoA
- MPLS core and edge routing
- RPKI for BGP route origin validation
- Traffic shaping (TC/qdisc), HTB, HFSC, FQ-CoDel
- Hierarchical QoS

### Cloud and Automation
- Cloud-init support for automated provisioning
- REST API for configuration management
- Ansible module (community.network.vyos)
- Terraform provider (available via HashiCorp registry)
- Python scripting via VyOS operational API
- gRPC support (in development)
- Netconf (experimental)

### Interfaces
- Ethernet (physical, virtual, VLAN 802.1Q/802.1ad)
- Bonding/LAG (802.3ad LACP)
- Bridge (802.1D/802.1Q)
- Wireless (802.11 via hostapd)
- PPPoE client and server
- Dummy interfaces
- MACvlan/MACvtap
- Virtual Ethernet (veth)
- TUN/TAP

### High-Performance Data Plane (VPP)
VyOS integrates fd.io VPP (Vector Packet Processor) for line-rate packet forwarding:
- Available as part of premium subscriptions
- Supports 10/25/40/100 GbE interfaces
- DPDK-based for user-space packet processing
- IPsec hardware offload support
- Suitable for carrier-grade NAT and firewall deployments

## Supported Platforms

### Public Cloud
- Amazon Web Services (AWS): EC2, AWS Marketplace, AWS Outposts
- Microsoft Azure: Azure Marketplace, Azure Stack Hub
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Google Cloud Marketplace
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI): OCI Marketplace
- Equinix Metal/Network Edge
- Exoscale
- Flow Swiss

### Private Cloud / Hypervisors
- KVM/QEMU (libvirt)
- VMware ESXi/vSphere
- Microsoft Hyper-V
- Nutanix AHV
- XCP-ng
- Proxmox VE
- OpenStack
- Red Hat OpenShift (containerized NOS)
- Oracle Linux KVM
- Oracle OLVM
- Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

### Bare Metal / Hardware
- Dell PowerEdge servers
- Dell Native Edge
- Supermicro servers
- Lanner network appliances
- Advantech network appliances
- Generic x86_64 hardware (BIOS/UEFI)
- ARM64 (Raspberry Pi 4+ for home/lab use)

### Edge Platforms
- ZEDEDA edge compute platform
- AWS Outposts

## Use Cases

### ISP / Service Provider
- Internet peering and transit BGP routing
- Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) for subscriber management
- MPLS backbone and L3VPN services
- RPKI-secured BGP to prevent route hijacking
- Segment Routing (SR-MPLS, SRv6) for traffic engineering

### Enterprise
- Branch office routing and SD-WAN
- DMVPN hub-and-spoke VPN architecture
- Zone-based firewall at network edge
- High-availability border routers with VRRP
- EVPN-VXLAN for campus/data center overlay

### Data Center
- BGP leaf-spine routing fabric
- EVPN-VXLAN overlay for tenant isolation
- Data center interconnect (DCI) over dark fiber or DWDM
- Multi-tenant network virtualization

### Cloud Networking
- Cloud gateway connecting on-premises to cloud
- VPN gateway for hybrid cloud connectivity
- NAT gateway for cloud egress
- Security gateway with stateful inspection
- Multi-cloud routing hub

### Edge / IoT
- Secure gateway for industrial IoT environments
- Traffic filtering and segmentation at the edge
- 4G/5G WAN failover with load balancing

## Subscription Details

### On-Premise Subscriptions
Available tiers (annual):
- **Standard**: LTS releases, basic support SLA
- **Priority**: Faster response SLAs, named support contacts
- **Premium**: Dedicated support, custom SLAs, consulting hours

Features included in all paid tiers:
- Stable LTS release access
- Security updates
- Official VyOS documentation access
- Access to support portal (support.vyos.com)

### Cloud Subscriptions
- Pay-as-you-go via cloud marketplace (AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI)
- Annual subscription discounts available
- BYOL (Bring Your Own License) available for existing on-prem subscribers

### VyOS for Good
Special pricing for:
- Educational institutions and universities
- Non-profit organizations
- First responders and emergency services
- Open source projects

### Community / Free
- Rolling release (nightly builds): https://vyos.net/get/nightly-builds/
- No SLA, community forum support only
- Suitable for lab, testing, and development

## Company Information

**Sentrium S.L.**
- Website: https://vyos.io
- Documentation: https://docs.vyos.io
- Blog: https://blog.vyos.io
- Support portal: https://support.vyos.com
- GitHub: https://github.com/vyos
- Community forum: https://forum.vyos.io
- Discord: https://vyos.io/discord

## Key URLs

- Homepage: https://vyos.io
- VyOS Platform product page: https://vyos.io/vyos-platform
- Universal Router: https://vyos.io/vyos-universal-router
- On-premise subscriptions: https://vyos.io/subscriptions/on-premise
- Cloud subscriptions: https://vyos.io/subscriptions/clouds
- All platforms: https://vyos.io/platforms
- All solutions: https://vyos.io/solutions
- Use cases: https://vyos.io/use-cases
- Success stories: https://vyos.io/success-stories
- Partners: https://vyos.io/partners
- Contact: https://vyos.io/contact-us
- Documentation: https://docs.vyos.io
- CLI reference: https://docs.vyos.io/en/latest/configuration/index.html
- Installation guide: https://docs.vyos.io/en/latest/installation/index.html
- Release notes: https://blog.vyos.io

## Frequently Asked Questions

**What is VyOS?**
VyOS is an open source network operating system that provides routing, firewall, VPN, and other networking services. It runs on standard x86_64 hardware or in virtual/cloud environments and is used as a replacement for expensive proprietary network appliances.

**Is VyOS free?**
The rolling release (nightly builds) is free. Production use with LTS releases and professional support requires a paid subscription from vyos.io.

**What routing protocols does VyOS support?**
VyOS supports BGP (v4/v6), OSPFv2, OSPFv3, IS-IS, RIP, RIPng, BFD, and multicast protocols (IGMP, PIM). It also supports MPLS, LDP, SR-MPLS, and SRv6.

**Can VyOS run on AWS, Azure, or GCP?**
Yes. VyOS is available on all major public cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud via their respective marketplaces, or via BYOL.

**What VPN types does VyOS support?**
VyOS supports IPsec (IKEv1/v2), WireGuard, OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec, SSTP, GRE tunnels, and various overlay protocols (VXLAN, GENEVE).

**How does VyOS compare to pfSense/OPNsense?**
VyOS is focused on enterprise and carrier-grade routing use cases, supporting advanced protocols like MPLS, SR-MPLS, SRv6, BGP EVPN, and BNG that pfSense/OPNsense do not. It is CLI-driven and better suited for infrastructure engineers.

**What is the VyOS Controller?**
The VyOS Controller is a centralized management plane for deploying, configuring, and monitoring multiple VyOS instances at scale. Contact sales for availability.

**Does VyOS support IPv6?**
Yes. VyOS has full dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 support including IPv6 routing protocols (OSPFv3, IS-IS, BGP), IPv6 firewall, NAT66, NAT64, DHCPv6, and IPv6 tunnels.