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BGP & Internet Routing

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The internet is a network of networks

The internet isn't one network — it's ~80,000 Autonomous Systems (AS), each with a unique AS number (ASN), connected by BGP (Border Gateway Protocol).

An AS is a network under one administrative control: your ISP, Google, Cloudflare, a university. Each AS announces which IP prefixes it owns to its neighbors.

BGP is called the "glue of the internet" — it's the protocol that makes routing between these independent networks possible.

Packets in motion — click to inspect:

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