Netlink Protocol Library Suite (libnl)

Summary

The libnl suite is a collection of libraries providing APIs to netlink protocol based Linux kernel interfaces.

Netlink is a IPC mechanism primarly between the kernel and user space processes. It was designed to be a more flexible successor to ioctl to provide mainly networking related kernel configuration and monitoring interfaces.

Libraries

The interfaces are split into several small libraries to not force applications to link against a single, bloated library.

libnl

Core library implementing the fundamentals required to use the netlink protocol such as socket handling, message construction and parsing, and sending and receiving of data. This library is kept small and minimalistic. Other libraries of the suite depend on this library.

libnl-route

API to the configuration interfaces of the NETLINK_ROUTE family including network interfaces, routes, addresses, neighbours, and traffic control.

libnl-genl

API to the generic netlink protocol, an extended version of the netlink protocol.

libnl-nf

API to netlink based netfilter configuration and monitoring interfaces (conntrack, log, queue)

Installation

The easiest method of installing the libnl library suite is to use the existing packages of your linux distribution. See the table below for a list of available packages per distribution. Please note that the list may be out of date at times. Refer to the manual of your distribution for more information on how to install packages.

Netlink Library (libnl):http://www.infradead.org/~tgr/libnl/doc/core.html

Routing Family Netlink Library (libnl-route):http://www.infradead.org/~tgr/libnl/doc/route.html