Talk:Border Gateway Protocol

Related articles not doing what I expected

I created a preliminary list of related articles, including BGP connection establishment‎. Much to my surprise, even though I was writing what I thought was one of those articles as a separate page, the text appeared to transclude onto the related article page, and the software seems to think it is a template rather than a separate subtopic article.

Can anyone show me what I should be doing to have a "related article" reference to a sub-article, but without transcluding?

Howard C. Berkowitz 11:00, 6 May 2008 (CDT)

There are two links there to fill. To the left of the colon is a link to the article page. To the right is a link to a template that contains the definiton of the word, or very short description of the topic. I just put your article in the right page. You can now see the red link to the right, that is where the short description should go. Chris Day 11:08, 6 May 2008 (CDT)

I just added a definition so the whole thing should now read as follows:

"'BGP connection establishment: used to establish a TCP connection and a BGP session between two routers before they can exchange exterior routing information. [r] [e]"

I'm no expert, so this might be completely wrong. But you can edit the definition/description by clicking on the small [e] link at the end. Chris Day 11:14, 6 May 2008 (CDT)

I'm still not getting some nuances here, possibly because I don't know where the formatting definitions and such are indexed here, as opposed, say, to Wikipedia. Your note is both informative and confusing, in that it brings up a point I hadn't even considered: that the "related articles" page would be anything other than a list of article links, such as a place where definitions were kept. While I thought I understood the basic idea about listing parent topics, subtopics, and related topics, I now realize that there is an underlying structure of templates that do...something.

In other words, there is a reason to write the related article links as templates rather than double-square-bracketed article names. This reason may be very logical when one understands the underlying data structures of clusters, metadata, and other things I don't know about, but I feel like I'm missing some extremely fundamental things about how the Citizendium software model differs from the Wikipedia software model. Howard C. Berkowitz 13:15, 6 May 2008 (CDT)

Actually, the r template was created (by me) independently of all the subpage apparatus, so you'd be understandably confused if you thought they must be somehow connected. The whole point of using {{r}} instead of double-square-bracketed article names is to place definitions after the article titles, in the lists. Why include definitions on Related Articles pages? Essentially to kill two birds with one stone: instead of having separate "glossary" pages, which would list topics all over again, and which people have wanted to write, you can list all the topics related to a given topic, and define them there on the Related Articles page. This also increases the usefulness of Related Articles pages, because it lets people know what things are before they click on them. Then, the [r] link takes you to the Related Articles page for the article in question, which will (in the fullness of time :-) ) allow you to navigate around a whole interconnected set of Related Articles pages. Finally, the [e] link takes you straight to the definition page, so you can edit the definition ASAP. --Larry Sanger 14:06, 6 May 2008 (CDT)

Let me see if I understand the steps:

• (not sure about this) after Subject/Metadata is created, either I click on "related articles" and generate a "related articles" page.
• On the related articles page, I create subheads for parent article, subtopics, and related articles, and, using {{tl|r}} the article names replacing tl and keeping r. I may have been doing this backwards with r|title
• Save this page, and things now get very confusing. Especially when the articles have not yet been created (redlink), will r and e exist on the line? Are you differentiating between article pages and definition pages? In other words, if I click on the e on the line for topic "foo", will that now create the article mainpage for foo, or is it creating some construct that is a "definition of foo?"

You're getting closer. Although i think you are getting confused by the notation being used in the talk page here. Note that the {{tl|r}} notation is just so we can easily reference a template on the talk page. So instead of writing {{[[Template:R|r]]}} (seen as {{r}}) we can write {{tl|r}} (seen as {{r}}). Likewise, for a different template, I can write {{tl|subpages}} (seen as {{subpages}}) instead of {{[[Template:Subpages|Subpages]]}} (seen as {{Subpages}}). So when using the {{r}} template it is the r that is kept not the tl. Does this makes sense? I think this will be clearer if you look at how it is being used on the actual related articles subpage. You had been doing it correctly, r|title is not backwards, that is correct. Chris Day 15:06, 6 May 2008 (CDT)

Possibly this figure will be useful to try and explain the anatomy of the {{r}} templates output when it is used on related articles subpages. Four distinct parts are displayed on the related articles subpage.

1. The article name in the form of [[Article Name]] ( for systems biology it is "Systems biology")
2. The definition transcluded from the def template in the form of {{Def Article Name}} (for systems biology it is "Template:Def Systems biology"}
3. A link to be able to go the related articles page of the specific article in the form of [ [[Article Name/Related Articles|r]] ] (for systems biology it is "[r]").
4. A link to be able to edit the definition template for the specific article in the form of [ [[Template:Def Article Name|e]] ] (for systems biology it is "[e]").

When complete it will look like the systems biology example in the figure.

• Systems biology [r]: The study of biological systems as a whole. ^[e]

When none of the pages exist it will be all red links. The definition will show up as a red link to the Template:Def Article Name similar to the autonomous system and BGP multihoming articles in the figure. Chris Day 15:46, 6 May 2008 (CDT)

Wow, good job there Chris. We just did the same thing, although you did it better. Could I (or you) copy your instructions above to {{r}} and also, if necessary, CZ:Definitions? --Larry Sanger 16:01, 6 May 2008 (CDT)

May want to replace this subpage with subarticles

To a certain extent, this is here because it was my first experiment with article-specific subpages. The more I look at them, even if the topics are stubby, the less I can now rationalize the subpage. It is reasonable to have a section, in the main article, on "scalability issues"; this is an area where I have worked with the Internet Research Task Force's Routing Research Group's effort in "Future Domain Routing", also informally called the "limits to BGP." Some of the areas here, indeed, are research, or, in the research context of the discipline, often continuing mailing list discussions from which some technologies (e.g., ORF) originated. Howard C. Berkowitz 08:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

You're talking about the advanced page? Chris Day 08:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes. The idea of "advanced", although I really want to think upon it more, was a catchall for something that is a factor in many networking protocols, "limits to scalability". Indeed, the latter might make an arguably "original synthesis" article; most IETF protocol specifications, especially in the applicability statement documents, do address scalability as a section, but I can't think of a document that explicitly tells authors to do this. Possibly, another aspect of "advanced" involves workarounds to flexibility limitations of the core technologies, or even methods to avoid instabilities brought on by certain operational practices. Howard C. Berkowitz 09:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't know where this goes

BGP blunder causing Great Firewall routes to be used outside China, e.g. blocking Facebook in Chile: http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/340997/china_great_firewall_spreads_overseas/ Sandy Harris 18:53, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

There probably are several places, including a policy-level Internet censorship for the ideas, and then it gets into articles about BGP errors, as well as ISP security (i.e.,, this was probably meant to use the technique of iBGP blackhole route injection but leaked them externally). Howard C. Berkowitz 15:19, 27 March 2010 (UTC)