Routing across the Internet and other public and private wide area networks (WANs) often requires use of a number of well-known routing protocols, such as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). These routing protocols allow multiple autonomous systems to operate in a decentralized, connected fashion, removing the need for an Internet backbone network. Such protocols require implementation of large routing tables, however, and thus involve significant overhead. To avoid this overhead, enterprises often rely on direct, point-to-point links acquired from a telecommunication provider. These links often involve a substantial amount of set-up work, however.
Routing network addresses, such as Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, from one server to another, remotely disposed server is often achieved though a direct, point-to-point link.