The Zebra project began in 1996. The idea for Zebra originally came from Kunihiro Ishiguro, who had been working at NIS, an ISP joint venture between British Telecom and Marubeni. Working for an ISP, Ishiguro had realized a great need for a new type of quality routing software. It was at this time that Ishiguro met Yoshinari Yoshikawa. Yoshikawa shared Ishiguro's vision for a new routing engine and they decided to combine resources to create the world's first routing engine software based on the GNU General Public License. This entity, called the Zebra Project, consists of the business expertise of IP Infusion combined with the technical skills of the world's top networking engineers and a commitment to offer top-quality free software routing engine.

Today, Zebra is nearing completion and the release of version 1.0. The vision of a free routing software that can respond quickly to changes in technology and offer functionality that users require is now even more critical. As internet use explodes, no longer can one company or proprietary software provide all the answers. In the case of Zebra, the mailing list and comments of users and engineers have evolved the software into the form it has today. Help us make Zebra the base of a new routing technology.