BGP: Border Gateway Protocol - Computerphile 

A 16 minute video on BGP without explaining how it actually works... For God's sake, give the man a marker and a brown piece of paper and let him draw a few examples.

Hi to all of you coming here in 2021 to understand what was going on at Facebook 👋

Google/RU-vid has a sense of humour recommending this today lol

This explanation is in dire need of evolving drawings to illustrate the examples he's using. He is making gratuitous use of his hands, which just shows the need for a visual aid.

Here after the Facebook outage?

I agree with the most of the comments saying Dr Tim Griffin kind off went too deep into theory why BGP was created, rather than talking about how it actually works which was what I was expecting out of this video. But I did ended up learning a few things along. The main point I got out of this is that BGP routing is usually managed by network engineers enforcing static rules rather than some implementation of dynamic routing mechanisms. We have not yet come up with a model that will follow the whole political aspect of Autonomous Systems and agreements between them. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I feel like the title is misleading. This is really just a glimpse at the math that's used for various network algorithms. This is not a video on 'BGP the routing protocol'. For example, the "min/max bandwidth" concept is not a easily done (or commonly used) feature of BGP. That's primarily an EIGRP thing. The first thing anyone does when they want to explain BGP is compare/contrast to traditional IGP routing protocols. He's rambling on about semi-rings and algorithms. What's crazy is that BGP is actually the most mathematically simple routing protocol. In most cases routing policy and network preferences are enforced using manual human intervention using various "kludges" like community strings and AS-path prepending. All this talk about semirings is just out of place.

If anybody is confused, its because he sorta covered a whole course in 16 minutes, and its like a 3rd or 4th year CS course.

Who’s here after Facebook’s BGP fail ?

I understood some of these words.

Still not sure what (semi) rings are / why they are called that

I'm at 9:14 and I still have no flipping idea what a semi-ring is...

hmm.. not sure if he actually explained anything here

Right now Facebook employees are here

At 12:20 why does the neighbour pick the pink path? Surely as he iterates along the path he sees that your link is weak so also breaks ties using shortest path?

that thing in the background make me feel like I need glasses

LOVE the Kylie & Jason illustration used for Dr. Griffin's "neighbours" anecdote. Another good one, Computerphile!

This video is a great example of how not to explain something in 16 minutes.

"Let me explain BGP" -> mildly interested "So, semirings..." -> Oh, I know this! So they're finally doing some real computer science here! Go on! "But we can't use them" -> So... I guess you will come back to them, right? "bla bla bla" -> Uhm... Any more content, please? outro -> Wtf just happened?

Nice video explaining BGP in high level, generalization of Dijkstra, BGP disagreement, and that routing protocols don't take congestion into account so ISPs need to adjust weights for load balancing.

Facebook brought me here. Well... Sort of.

This is a great discussion, I am so happy that I stumbled on his channel. Thank you for sharing

At first, I thought the same as those guys in the comments below. Lector packs lots of contents in the shortest videos, lacks illustrations etc. And THEN I've watched a series of Computerphile after taking a 4:20 hit. The change was drastic! These series are not aimed to explain how it works. They are aimed to deliver an impression. A background that will make pure theory much closer to you than before. You see, networking and Internet theory has lots of horrors within. Something needs to make those horrors familiar or even appealing. This series does it perfectly.

Very interesting.... but I'm not sure I've learned anything.

Oh my god, I love this guy, can we see more of him please!!!!

I've been waiting for this since BGP exceeded 512k and crashed most of the internet.

Glad I found this video, very good overview of BGP and related network topics

I think some people might be confused in the video. He is basically(not really) explaining the BGP algorithms and its architecture theories. And also Dr Tim covered couple courses that takes a while to study. This is basically CCNP level or a third/fourth year computer science course in BSc.

This was excellent, ty. He's not a natural talker, but fuck me does he love what he does.

Thank you so VERY MUCH for clarifying "routing" versus "rooting." I couldn't figure out what this new concept was. haha

I hadn't thought of Dijkstra's algorithm as the source of defining a semiring on paths in a directed weighted graph (does summing edge weights and min'ing totals really form a semiring for any set of edge weights in a given graph? Any set of numbers?) Conversely, it makes sense that alternative strategies like that of optimizing for capacity might not behave the same. Indeed max of the mins of edge weights is not necessarily the min of maxes. But what does any of this have to do with BGP and other protocols?

The only minor flaw I noticed is that while the speaker said arc (directed edge), the visualization showed an edge. Aside from that, very nice.

Not the best video.... Not even sure if it counts as a Parker Square.

it was sad at the end when the red frog had to leave the green one due to commitments with family at home.... on the plus side they will be able to keep in touch over the internet once someone finds out how BGP works..

I sadly have to agree with many, that this was a bad explanaition for BGP. The Routing Video that was linked by you was much better in explaining what BGP actually does. The whole "semi-ring"-thing / algebraic constructs is something no one will understand from his explanaition alone without some basic university math course / real interest in the topic and is mostly irrelevant for the idea what BGP does. So i think it would have been better to make some multipart with "general idea of BGP - why, how", "djikstra / bellman-ford", "delve into its maths", where the pure math part (i would love to see it, but i have only a really broad idea of what he was actually telling me) just expects some previous knowledge about algebra.

3:54 it's not a restriction: it's a preference. Many of the other paths still exist and are an option to be selected in case an other fails.

Someone correct me if i'm wrong here, but wouldn't getting min bandwidth from each path and breaking on shortest distance resolve the distributivity issue? in the example given, both clients would choose the high bandwidth path, as the bottleneck was higher bandwidth than the other hop on the shorter path. I think this checks out in other scenarios too... but if so is probably obvious and i should just read up on semi rings in shortest path algorithms.

I just hope he's not a teacher..........

So, this process of picking the Min capacity link to represent a path and then compare it with another path using Max function, what is it called??

I think the title was a bit misleading on this one. Or I completely missed him BGP. I think something more general such as the problems with internet routing would be more appropriate.

Should be titled "Part 1", since we haven't even *gotten* to any of the meat (or even skin!) of BGP yet. BTW, official ISP network administrator here! I'm the guy who has to adjust the weights if/when things congest, but of course the *real* meat of my job is to adjust/upgrade/supplement the *links* and/or re-engineer the routing graph well in advance of real bandwidth demand mustering up enough oomph to congest them. xD

Very interesting as always 👍

I often hear that "there is no centralized control over the Internet", but still there is some that can sell domain names, some that control the top domains, whatever I want to do on Internet it always end up in that I has to pay someone a huge amount of money. If no one controll it and no one owns it, where do the money goes and what shall I do if I want to become a ISP? Thank you for a great channel and interesting videos.

more networking videos!

I really enjoyed the higher level explanation

This seemed a bit to advanced for a 16min Video. Touching on so many subjects that none of them are clear to people without prioir knowledge.

perhaps we (meaning you Computerphile) need to redo this video... may have to mix around the order of explanations, add some diagrams etc...

I'd appreciate subtitles being added to these videos

This one is highly technical which kinda is a shame.

As an American, people chide me too when I say "root er" (router) or "roots" (routes). Makes more sense to me. People did not get their kicks on "Rowt" 66.

I have my algorithms final exam today so this is perfect! What a coincidence!

Starts the video saying "rooting", changes it up to "routing" by the 13th minute... now my head hurts.

Notice he intersperses the UK pronunciation "rooter" (router) with the US pronunciation of "rowte" but not "root" (route)

YES, NETWORKING. Too bad I already took my BGP exam before this video came out :x Still awesome vid.

Really interesting, thanks a ton!

For me one of the most informative videos I've ever had the honor to enjoy - really! Thanks a thousand times!

Still looking for the actual content in this video

why those frogs got to be so cute

Configuration of bgp is fun.

One thing I took away from this is that it could be beneficial to general population to break up commercial ISPs/their networks and transfer control to the (international) public (e.g. creating a "Euronet" in the EU). Am I missing some relevant info that makes this a bad idea?

more of this guy please. He explains all this very well!

Does a router route or a rooter route or a rooter root?

as a professional network engineer I'm missing a sentence on distance vector vs. link state protocols.

I want to hear more

Very interesting but the title seems not to fit content.... Need a part 2 to address bgp more.

Is it sad that I have *EVERY SINGLE ONE* of those books on his shelf?

I understood that but only because I have already done 3rd year networks at St Andrews.

His backdrop didn't fully cover all those Cisco Press books sitting on his bookshelf =)

I liked the bit with the frogs.

wtf is the backdrop?

So it puts the "Inter" in "Internet" from "Internetwork".

it only took me 16 minutes from not understanding BGP to not understanding computer networks

Wonderful sir

I am still waiting for an explanation of what a ring is, so I can know what a semi ring is, so I can understand the rest of this video.

I wonder what they were hiding behind that greenish/blueish screenie-thingie there...

I really thought wtf is he on about with his abstract operators then he said like yeah max and min and I was like ooooooh like that! Makes sense to use minimal values along a patht to determine the best path. A path is only as fast as it slowest link anyway.

wow, that background gives me a headache as I try to focus on it...

"rooting" ... teehee :)

it just works

Does anybody else feels like the video didn't really explain the BGP?

How many people believe this was tied to the FB hearings⚓

Facebook.

should have done this with mpls

That's how the perfect english sounds like.

This video is pretty... oof.... I'd love to hear more about this topic. Can we ask a different guy?

I like the part when he said interface.

I know some of these words

As cool as this video is they really should change the title 😂

They can't control the entire internet... but they sure are trying their darnest.

Woooosh.

I think he just likes saying Dijkstra. It's not like we don't get what an algorithm is by the third time you've said it, bruh.

Interesting accent. Reminds me of Kevin Spacey impersonating Jack Lemon.

That background is really distracting

i like those frogs

Misleading title. I did not learn about BGP after listening to him for 16 minutes. The title should change to " How to make a long speech in any topic!"

I understood the Kylie & Jason neighbours reference because I am Australian. :|

But BGP won't let me be So everybody just follow me Cuz I'm the shortest path to your ISP So everyone learn BGP! Dan an an ar na, Dan an an ar na, Dan an an ar na, na na na na! (To the tune of Slim Shady Woithout Me!)

split pronunciation of 'routing', always fount that weird.

ahh yes.. the _rooting_ protocols

Nice.. different..