BGP characteristics

BGP has the following characteristics:

• Focuses on route control and selection rather than route discovery and calculation.

• Uses TCP to enhance reliability.

• Measures the distance of a route by using a list of ASs that the route must travel through to reach the destination. BGP is also called a path-vector protocol.

• Supports CIDR.

• Reduces bandwidth consumption by advertising only incremental updates. BGP is very suitable to advertise large numbers of routes on the Internet.

• Eliminates routing loops by adding AS path information to BGP route updates.

• Uses policies to implement flexible route filtering and selection.

• Has good scalability.