Break the Glass and Walk Away: A (VERY) Brief Overview of BGP

Chaos Lever Podcast

Ned and Chris give a very brief overview of BGP, its place in the history of the internet, and how it works today.

It’s a Confusing Day in the Neighborship

Sure, Kim Kardashian broke the internet that one time, but she’s not the only one capable of such a feat. In this episode, Ned and Chris recount the tale of how Verizon and a BGP optimizer took large swaths of the internet offline in 2019. This leads them into the intricacies of border gateway protocols, tracing its evolution from a temporary solution for NSFNET in the 1980s to a foundational element of internet routing today. Along the way, they explore version four's operational details, including key attributes like local preferences and AS path length.

Links

• BGP Deep Dive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVo6cDnQQm0
• BGP defined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol
• ASN Allocation: https://www.nro.net/about/rirs/statistics/
• Three napkins protocol: https://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/69048160/the-three-napkins-protocol-quick-fix-for-early-internet-problem-left-web-open-to-attack
• Or was it the TWO Napkins protocol?!?: https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-two-napkin-protocol/?key=the-two-napkin-protocol
• Allegheny and DQE mess up the internet: https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-verizon-and-a-bgp-optimizer-knocked-large-parts-of-the-internet-offline-today/
• NSFNET: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation_Network
• NSFNET Backbone: https://new.nsf.gov/impacts/internet
• Leading Tier 1 ISPs: https://macronetservices.com/who-are-the-leading-global-tier-1-isps/