Babel has provisions for using multiple dynamically computed metrics; by default, it uses hop-count on wired networks and a variant of expected transmission count on wireless links, but can be configured to take radio diversity into account [2] or to automatically compute a link's latency and include it in the metric.

[4][5] In October 2015, Babel was chosen as the mandatory-to-implement protocol by the IETF Homenet working group, albeit on an Experimental basis.

[6] In June 2016, an IETF working group was created whose main goal is to produce a standard version of Babel.

[7] In January 2021, the working group produced a standard version of Babel,[1] then proceeded to publish a number of extensions, including for authentication, source-specific routing, and routing of IPv4 through IPv6 routers.

[8] Several implementations of Babel are freely available: Both BIRD and the reference version have support for Source-specific routing[16] and for cryptographic authentication.