Why BGP communities are better than AS-path prepends

What this post added

This post explains the fundamental concepts of BGP, including Autonomous Systems, IP prefixes, and routing announcements. It details how BGP messages carry metadata like AS-path and communities, and introduces the BGP best path selection algorithm. The post specifically contrasts AS-path prepending with BGP communities as traffic engineering tools, explaining the limitations of prepending and the advantages of communities for influencing inbound traffic, showcasing Cloudflare's advanced understanding and application of these protocols for network optimization and resilience.