[ih] The story of BGP?

[Dave Crocker]

On 2/11/2013 8:15 AM, Guy Almes wrote:
>    And the slightly subtle thing about it was that, not only was the
> number of ASes growing rapidly, but that their topology became
> distinctly non-hierarchical.


This highlights two different transition milestones, I think:

    *  Moving from a network of independent hosts (machines) to an 
internetwork of independent networks.

    *  Moving from a monopolistic backbone model to a competitive 
backbone model.

I've always understood BGP to be significant for the latter.

I've also understood that there were some non-BBN IP backbones, before 
NSFNET but that routing for them was done in a very hand-crafted manner, 
and that NSFNET served as a forcing function to produce a routing model 
that comfortably supported multiple, independent and competing backbones.

The point about alternative models for (administrative? topological?) 
structuring of a backbone's internals (hierarchical vs. non-) is 
interesting.  Might be worth expanding on that...


d/
-- 
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net