I’ve been on the internet for quite a long time, but I’ve never heard of it before. So maybe it’s basic knowledge for a given discipline, but maybe not for others?
It’s also, I assume by the authors, submitted to hackernews which is a pretty diverse place. “Basics” is relative.
I am not saying there should be a dissertation about how the thing works, but it’s generally bad form to use abbreviations without using the long form at least once - for people who would indeed like to search for more information.
Many enterprises use it for their connectivity. If you are multihomed it's basically essential.
Even if you are not multihomed BGP is the most robust way to handle failover between two uplinks to the same ISP. If you are not using full routes and just taking default from each ISP the requirements/load on your router(s) are almost nothing.
Another popular use case is inside private networks, especially over GRE tunnel meshes where the filtering features of BGP allow better/easier control over topology than OSPF.
I've even seen individual servers use BGP for anycasting (usually DNS servers) or http load balancing (with DSR and L4 hashing on the upstream router).
Sorry when I say large I include corporate networks where you want the sort of redundancy that IBGP can give you. I guess Large/medium would be a fair statement.
It’s also, I assume by the authors, submitted to hackernews which is a pretty diverse place. “Basics” is relative.
I am not saying there should be a dissertation about how the thing works, but it’s generally bad form to use abbreviations without using the long form at least once - for people who would indeed like to search for more information.