RFC 1265 (rfc1265) - Page 1 of 8

BGP Protocol Analysis

Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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Network Working Group                                 Y. Rekhter, Editor
Request for Comments: 1265        T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM Corp.
                                                            October 1991


                         BGP Protocol Analysis

1. Status of this Memo.

   This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
   not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is
   unlimited.

2. Introduction.

   The purpose of this report is to document how the requirements for
   advancing a routing protocol to Draft Standard have been satisfied by
   the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). This report summarizes the key
   feature of BGP, and analyzes the protocol with respect to scaling and
   performance. This is the first of two reports on the BGP protocol.

   BGP is an inter-autonomous system routing protocol designed for the
   TCP/IP internets.  Version 1 of the BGP protocol was published in RFC
   1105. Since then BGP versions 2 and 3 have been developed.  Version 2
   was documented in RFC 1163. Version 3 is documented in [1]. The
   changes between versions 1, 2 and 3 are explained in Appendix 3 of
   [1].

   Possible applications of BGP in the Internet are documented in [2].

   Please send comments to .

3. Acknowledgements.

   The BGP protocol has been developed by the IWG/BGP Working Group of
   the Internet Engineering Task Force. We would like to express our
   deepest thanks to Guy Almes (Rice University) who was the previous
   chairman of the IWG Working Group.  We also like to explicitly thank
   Bob Braden (ISI) and Bob Hinden (BBN) for the review of this document
   as well as their constructive and valuable comments.

4. Key features and algorithms of the BGP protocol.

   This section summarizes the key features and algorithms of the BGP
   protocol. BGP is an inter-autonomous system routing protocol; it is
   designed to be used between multiple autonomous systems. BGP assumes
   that routing within an autonomous system is done by an intra-
   autonomous system routing protocol. BGP does not make any assumptions



BGP Working Group
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