Practical BGP

BGP Cores

While a network using only interior gateway protocols for routing can grow to a very large size utilizing good design techniques such as well-conceived IP addressing and summarization plans, almost all networks become large enough that managing and scaling them using only an interior gateway protocol becomes difficult. If a network begins with a less than optimum design, the point where it can no longer be managed effectively becomes evident much more quickly.

In fact, splitting up a large, disorganized network managed by several different groups of administrators may be the best path to introducing better administrative control and scaling properties. Introducing structure and additional policy mechanisms enabled by BGP will typically ...