Exterior Gateway Protocol

(1) (Exterior Gateway Protocol) A broad category of routing protocols that are designed to span different autonomous systems. Contrast with IGP.

(2) (Exterior Gateway Protocol) The original exterior gateway routing protocol (see above), which has been widely used in the U.S. Data Defense Network (DDN) and National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet). EGP is a distance vector protocol that uses polling to retrieve routing information. EGP has been superseded by BGP. See BGP and routing protocol.

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The Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) is a now obsolete routing protocol for the Internet originally specified in 1982 by Eric C. Rosen of Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and David L. Mills. It was first described in RFC 827 and formally specified in RFC 904 (1984). EGP is a simple reachability protocol, and, unlike modern distance-vector and path-vector protocols, it is limited to tree-like topologies.

During the early days of the Internet, an exterior gateway protocol, EGP version 3, was used to interconnect autonomous systems. EGP3 should not be confused with EGPs in general. Currently, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the accepted standard for Internet routing and has essentially replaced the more limited EGP3.

See also

• Interior gateway protocol

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