Exterior Gateway Protokoll (EGP)

The Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) controls the communication between routers of different autonomous systems (independent networks). The EGP is used to exchange routing tables with neighbouring routers - also called edge routers. Each autonomous network system has at least one edge router, which is regarded as the last internally managed device by an AS. The mutual exchange of the routing tables takes place via these edge routers in intervals of up to 480 seconds. The routing tables transmit information on the accessible IP addresses, a list of all known routers, as well as path information in order to always select the best possible route for the transfer of network data to each router.