TANOS is a project to produce an intelligent IP routing system using advanced routing algorithms borrowed from the telephony industry, and to make an implementation available under the GPL (ie as "Freeware")
TANOS will use a modular approach, allowing the easy addition of new routing algorithms ("schemes") by sysadmins, but will initially implement a "trial and error" route exploration scheme, with global optimisation of the topology between TANOS-aware routers.
TANOS will benefit the most from networks with mesh rather than ring topologies. The ultimate aim is to produce a suite of schemes suited to networks of all size, from dense, highly connected processor farms, to virtual WAN's embedded in the rest of the Internet.