vishvananda/netlink

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

3297 stars · 834 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

A Go library providing a simple, high-level API for Linux netlink socket communication, modeled loosely on the iproute2 CLI. It lets user-space programs manage network interfaces, IP addresses, routes, and IPsec/xfrm configuration from Go code.

Use cases

• manage linux network interfaces from go
• add and remove bridges programmatically
• set ip addresses and routes in go
• configure ipsec xfrm policies
• build container networking in go
• query link and route state on linux

When to choose

• you need to configure linux networking (links, addresses, routes) from a Go program
• you want an iproute2-like API instead of raw netlink messages
• you are building container or SDN tooling that manipulates kernel network state

When to avoid

• you need cross-platform network configuration (Linux netlink only)
• you cannot run with elevated privileges, since netlink requires root
• you need full coverage of advanced link types or routing rules not yet implemented

Facets

library · maturity stable

networking developer-tools networking operating-systems developer-tools go netlink iproute2 kernel-interface network-configuration linux-kernel linux

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="vishvananda/netlink")