What is BGP?

BGP is an abbreviation of Border Gateway Protocol also known as Distance-Vector Routing Protocol or Path Vector Protocol. Typically, BGP is a routing protocol that contains a set of exterior gateway standards that facilitates routing of information of autonomous systems over the internet. In today’s networking environment, BGP is the only gateway protocol used by network administrators to route information across the systems connection to the internet or within autonomous systems.

BGP enables the network administrator to define and configure the paths, rule-sets and policies of a network, based on which the routing decisions are made over the internet. Based on the type of system applied, the BGP is categorized into two types, EBGP, and IBGP. EBGP is an Exterior Border Gateway Protocol that enables the routing protocol applied to the systems connected to the public internet. IBGP is an Internal Border Gateway Protocol which is incorporated to route information within an autonomous system. Below are the general characteristics of BGP.

• This routing protocol is mainly used for routing information between discrete networks.
• BGP will effective distribute information signals to all the systems connected to the network or internet with the path prefix contained in the core.
• The protocol is capable of choosing the best route among the multiple paths available in the core.

Routing over Autonomous System

BGP is mainly used for routing information over the autonomous system. Typically, an autonomous system is a set of standards and policies to define a network or a group of network controlled by a common network administrator. Following are the traits of an autonomous system,

• In autonomous systems, unwanted interconnections between one or more routers are encountered.
• It follows a common routing policy
• A typical autonomous system is easily identified by its global ASN number.