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Note 46
FROM: Jack Haverty
As I recall, we [BBN] set up the basic architecture for a multi-system Internet and invented the concept of "Autonomous Systems" (ASes). From that, we defined the initial EGP, documented in RFC 827, as the simplest possible scheme to achieve just the most basic connectivity. To paraphrase Einstein - "as simple as possible, but not simpler".
That first EGP was intended more as a "firewall" mechanism than anything else. It would enable one AS, such as the "core gateways" to be operated and managed by one group (e.g., us at BBN), to hopefully be unaffected by whatever might go on in some other AS. Extra-AS information would simply be viewed as suspect, and intra-AS information would dominate all routing decisions.
We explicitly (probably with ARPA encouragement) left further evolution of EGP to Someone Else. If BBN had continued to define and evolve EGP it wouldn't have been a very good test of whether or not the architecture really allowed pieces of the Internet to be developed, managed, and evolved independently. That vacuum probably led to the engineers-and-napkins scenario somewhat later, and the definition of BGP as a replacement for the intentionally rudimentary EGP.
From the perspective of the "core" system, EGP made the "core gateways" a lot less vulnerable to whatever Dave Mills, Noel Chappa, Jim Mathis, and others did to their own Autonomous Systems....! They'd try something new, and we'd then get the complaints that the Internet was broken. This is a good example of the somewhat mundane but crucial mechanisms we had to put into the Internet to enable a single Internet to simultaneously support research and experimental work as well as reliable infrastructure-class communications.
/Jack Haverty
As I recall, we [BBN] set up the basic architecture for a multi-system Internet and invented the concept of "Autonomous Systems" (ASes). From that, we defined the initial EGP, documented in RFC 827, as the simplest possible scheme to achieve just the most basic connectivity. To paraphrase Einstein - "as simple as possible, but not simpler".
That first EGP was intended more as a "firewall" mechanism than anything else. It would enable one AS, such as the "core gateways" to be operated and managed by one group (e.g., us at BBN), to hopefully be unaffected by whatever might go on in some other AS. Extra-AS information would simply be viewed as suspect, and intra-AS information would dominate all routing decisions.
We explicitly (probably with ARPA encouragement) left further evolution of EGP to Someone Else. If BBN had continued to define and evolve EGP it wouldn't have been a very good test of whether or not the architecture really allowed pieces of the Internet to be developed, managed, and evolved independently. That vacuum probably led to the engineers-and-napkins scenario somewhat later, and the definition of BGP as a replacement for the intentionally rudimentary EGP.
From the perspective of the "core" system, EGP made the "core gateways" a lot less vulnerable to whatever Dave Mills, Noel Chappa, Jim Mathis, and others did to their own Autonomous Systems....! They'd try something new, and we'd then get the complaints that the Internet was broken. This is a good example of the somewhat mundane but crucial mechanisms we had to put into the Internet to enable a single Internet to simultaneously support research and experimental work as well as reliable infrastructure-class communications.
/Jack Haverty
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