Research report 2018 - Max Planck Institute for Informatics

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: About BGP Communities

Authors
Feldmann, Anja
Departments
Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Saarbrücken D3 – Internet Architektur
Summary
Internet Routing Protocols like the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) are controlling the ways the user data takes through the internet. For this, the routing information has to be disseminated to all routing instances. BGB communities are just some additional “data” that is attached to the routing packets, and hereby signal the need for temporary, local, or other special, often restricted actions. They can, however, easily be abused. Indeed, their semantics is an even more severe problem. Therefore, we have a “wild west situation”: Everyone can do as they please.

For the full text, see the German version.

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