[ih] The story of BGP?

[Justine Sherry]

Hi Folks,

I was in the graduate networking class yesterday at Berkeley and we
were discussing the origin of BGP for Interdomain routing, and we
realized we were all a bit vague on the history of BGP and how it
developed.

Our (graduate students') understanding goes something like this:
Pre-1994: EGP, hierarchical Internet to NSFNet
Some point in 1994: "Flag Day" and everyone switches to BGP
Since 1994: Minimal evolution in BGP

There are two big gaps here, of course.
(1) Where did BGP come from, who drafted the spec, why was it settled
on as what we all switched to in 1994? Were there alternatives in
mind?
(2) How is the BGP we switched to in 1994 different from the BGP we
used today, and who drove those changes?

Does anyone have any pointers to a summary of this history or
interesting experiences to share? Thank you!

Cheers,
Justine (& assorted networking graduate students)