This document assumes the reader has basic familiarity with several core areas of networking and Linux, but does not require prior experience with SONiC, Redis, or SAI. Any SONiC-specific concepts are introduced as they appear.

The reader is expected to understand:

• Layer-2 concepts: MAC addresses, switching, VLANs (tagged and untagged ports)
• Layer-3 concepts: IP addressing, routing, ARP/ND
• Basic forwarding pipeline ideas (ingress → lookup → egress)

Deep knowledge of ASIC pipelines is not required; relevant aspects of SAI and the hardware behavior are explained where needed.

The reader should be comfortable with:

• Running commands such as ip link, bridge, ip addr, ip neigh
• Understanding network interfaces, bridges, and system logs
• Basics of systemd, containers, and process supervision
• Reading / interpreting log messages

No kernel-level programming experience is required.

Appendix A provides a Linux netlink primer.

The reader is not required to know Redis. The following assumptions are made:

• Reader understands the idea of a database with keys and values
• Reader knows that multiple logical Redis databases can exist
• The document explains SONiC’s conventions:
  • Table-name and key concatenation using TABLE|KEY1|KEY2
  • Tables stored as Redis hashes
  • Basic commands like HGETALL, HSET, KEYS, DEL

Appendix B provides a practical Redis primer used throughout SONiC.

No prior SONiC experience is required. The document explains:

• Containers used by SONiC (database, swss, syncd, bgp, etc.)
• How processes communicate through Redis and netlink
• How orchagent and syncd operate
• How configuration flows top-down and how state flows bottom-up

The reader does not need:

• Routing protocol implementation knowledge
• FRR internals
• ASIC vendor SDK knowledge
• SAI expertise
• Prior work with netlink sockets

Everything necessary is introduced within the sections or appendices.