BGP: What is border gateway protocol, and how does it work?
Finding the best way to get from Point A to Point B is easy if you’re drawing a straight line on a piece of paper, but when Point A is your computer and Point B is a website halfway around the world, things get a bit trickier.
In the latter case, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the routing protocol used by the global internet, is used to find the best path by weighing the latest network conditions based on reachability and routing information. BGP manages how data packets get delivered between the large networks that make up the internet and makes it possible for the internet as we know it to operate efficiently.
What is Border Gateway Protocol?
BGP has been called the glue of the Internet and the postal service of the internet. One comparison likens BGP to GPS applications on mobile phones. If you were driving from Boston to Los Angeles, the GPS app decides the best route possible using existing knowledge of road conditions, traffic jams, and whether you want to travel on a toll road. Sometimes, the shortest path is not always the best path. BGP is like having a continuously updated map of the internet from which routers choose the best path at the time.