Border Gateway Protocol, the standardized routing protocol used to exchange routing information between different networks on the internet. It determines the best paths for data to travel across interconnected networks.
Acronym formed in the 1980s from 'Border Gateway Protocol,' with 'border' referring to the boundaries between autonomous network systems, 'gateway' indicating connection points, and 'protocol' from Greek protokollon meaning 'first sheet glued to a manuscript.'
BGP is often called the 'duct tape of the internet' because it holds the entire global network together, yet it operates on a trust-based system with minimal built-in security. A single misconfigured BGP announcement can accidentally take down major portions of the internet, as happened when Facebook disappeared for six hours in 2021.
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