• In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief ScientistGeoff Hustonreturns with his annual review of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), reflecting on developments across 2025. • Geoff has been publishing this year-in-review analysis of BGP dynamics for more than a decade, and this time he has uncovered some genuinely surprising shifts. • His 2025 analysis has been published in two parts on the APNIC Blog. • BGP is the mechanism by which network operators announce their Internet address space to the rest of the world and, in turn, learn about the addresses announced by others. • Operators participating in the global default-free zone receive all publicly announced routes, each expressed as an IP prefix and associated with its originating Autonomous System Number (ASN). • Every BGP speaker has a unique ASN, and all routing information is exchanged and interpreted through this fundamental identifier.

Article Summaries:

  • Podcast Review: BGP in 2025

APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston hosts the latest episode of PING, delivering his annual BGP review. Huston highlights unexpected shifts in Border Gateway Protocol dynamics, noting that the growth rates of both IPv4 and IPv6 routes are slowing, suggesting the Internet’s addressing market has reached saturation. He explains how this change may alter operators’ capital‑investment decisions for routing infrastructure, as the cost of handling ever‑larger routing tables continues to rise. The episode references two APNIC Blog posts-“BGP Updates in 2025” and “BGP in 2025”-which detail the data behind these trends.

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