BGP

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) governs the exchange of routing information among autonomous networks, ensuring that packets can get from point A to point B regardless of most possible problems. BGP explores the capabilities and limitations of this exquisitely important protocol with an eye to teaching network engineers how to build systems that are faster, less costly, and more survivable than ever before. It's a great guide for those responsible for managing the interfaces between large networks and their neighbors, and a valuable aid for people preparing for their Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) tests or other advanced certifications.

Authors of protocol-centric books risk becoming bogged down in bits. Iljitsch van Beijnum avoids overwhelming his readers with packet diagrams and message analysis, choosing instead to focus on how routers use BGP to efficiently use available connections (he focuses on Cisco Systems routers in his configuration examples, but the concepts apply universally). He also pays attention--and these sections are among the book's best--to strategies for coping with problems such as cable cuts and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. He understands, and conveys to his readers through network diagrams, configuration listings, and diagnostic traces, that BGP is a tool for managing the points at which networks intersect. --David Wall

Topics covered: Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), particularly as configured under Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS), and its means of describing routes across independently managed networks. Sections deal with addressing, bandwidth provisioning, traffic engineering, system monitoring, selecting and interconnecting with Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and troubleshooting.