The Internet uses a single interdomain routing protocol : the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The current version of BGP is defined in :rfc:`4271`. BGP differs from the intradomain routing protocols that we have already discussed in several ways. First, BGP is a `path-vector` protocol. When a BGP router advertises a route towards a prefix, it announces the IP prefix and the interdomain path used to reach this prefix. From BGP's point of view, each domain is identified by a unique `Autonomous System` (AS) number [#fasdomain]_ and the interdomain path contains the AS numbers of the transit domains that are used to reach the associated prefix. This interdomain path is called the `AS Path`. Thanks to these AS-Paths, BGP does not suffer from the count-to-infinity problems that affect distance vector routing protocols. Furthermore, the AS-Path can be used to implement some routing policies. Another difference between BGP and the intradomain routing protocols is that a BGP router does not send the entire contents of its routing table to its neighbors regularly. Given the size of the global Internet, routers would be overloaded by the number of BGP messages that they would need to process. BGP uses incremental updates, i.e. it only announces the routes that have changed to its neighbors.