EGP

networkingISP & telecom

Stands for: Exterior Gateway Protocol (the class, and the historical protocol)

Exterior Gateway Protocol - the class of protocols that route BETWEEN autonomous systems, and also the name of the specific 1980s protocol BGP replaced.

The term does double duty. As a class, EGP means inter-domain routing - today effectively synonymous with BGP, where policy, business relationships, and reachability matter more than shortest paths. As a proper noun, EGP (RFC 904, 1984) was the actual protocol of the early internet's tree-shaped topology; its inability to handle arbitrary meshes is precisely what BGP was invented to fix in 1989. Exam answers and old documents use both senses, so the disambiguation is worth carrying.

Also known as: egp, exterior gateway protocol, inter-domain routing

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