This is what people mean when they say "prompting an LLM is like the old google-fu; some people have it, some don't".

Try this prompt instead:

"Please explain the meaning of BGP in the following snippet: The need for Roto comes from Rotonda, our BGP engine written in Rust. Mature BGP applications usually feature some way to filter incoming route announcements. The complexity of these filters often exceed the capabilities of configuration languages. With Rotonda, we want to allow our users to write more complex filters with ease. So we decided to give them the power of a full scripting language."

When I searched for what does BGP mean, and DDG's LLM said "border gateway protocol". Even though I gave zero context and there are other possible meanings. The correct answer is probably something like "BGP can have multiple meanings depending on the context. The most common use of BGP is in networking where it means Border Gateway Protocol. If you provide more information on the context a better answer can be given." Or possibly it could link to the Wikipedia page.

Is that the response from google/gemma-3-1b-it or something? Almost funny how off it is.

Whatever DuckDuckGo uses. First answer was board gateway protocol then I asked what is outside the context of networking.

That was a pretty bad response, so I tried Grok 3, using the prompt "What's the likely meaning of BGP in a Hacker News article?"

Its entire response:

"In a Hacker News article, BGP most likely refers to Border Gateway Protocol, a key internet protocol used for routing data between different networks (autonomous systems) on the internet. It’s often discussed in contexts like network security, internet infrastructure, or outages caused by misconfigurations, as BGP is critical for directing traffic across the global internet. For example, a Hacker News article might cover BGP-related incidents like route leaks or hijacks, which can disrupt connectivity or enable cyberattacks.

If the context suggests something else (e.g., a specific acronym in a niche domain), could you provide more details about the article? I can also search for the specific post if you have a link or title."

Pretty good, eh?

I specifically ask the LLM about non-networking contexts because I was interested in what else BGP could mean.

I believe that every possible combination of 3 letters has at least 5 different meanings - most of them only used in some tiny niche (often just one department of a company)

I see. The problem is you left out that only non-networking contexts were considered, so that list missed the most relevant answer with no explanation.

If you look back you will see that networking contexts was assumed. I was trying to make the point that BGP can have multiple meanings. Between all the other replies and me not being a great writer that context was lost. However if you just the parent of my reply and then my post in isolation I think it still makes sense why I wouldn't have mentioned that context.

It’s on a site called NL Net Labs and it’s mentioned in this way:

> The need for Roto comes from Rotonda, our BGP engine written in Rust. Mature BGP applications usually feature some way to filter incoming route announcements.

I think networking and routing specifically is fair to assume.