What can we unlearn from BGP?
Timothy G. Griffin · 2005
Today the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is used to maintain global Internet connectivity between thousands of autonomous routing domains. BGP represents the principle example of a routing protocol which supports complex routing policies enabling a large heterogeneous collection of networks to cooperate and compete with their neighbors. As such, it appears that BGP could teach us something about interconnecting ambient networks.I'll argue that nothing could be further from the truth. BGP represents an inflexible, fragile, teetering mound of ad-hocery and accidental complexity that no self-respecting computer scientist would think of emulating. However, I will argue that valuable anti-lessons can and should be learned. The principle anti-lesson is that control-plane protocols should not themselves be standardized. Rather, we should attempt to define, develop, and stantandardize meta-protocols that can capture large classes of control-plane protocols.