MPLS

Abstract
Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) is the new means to take care of the fastest growing communication network to enhance the speed, scalability and service provisioning capabilities. In order to optimize the use of transmission resources, MPLS carries differentiated services across the Internet through a virtual path capability between packet (label) switches. MPLS also has the capabilities to engineer traffic tunnels by avoiding congestion and utilizing all available bandwidth with an efficient manner. The core value of MPLS is followed by the comparison of MPLS network with the existing network and MPLS signaling protocols: Constrained based Label Distribution Protocol (CR-LDP), Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) and Traffic Extension RSVP (RSVP-TE) maintaining the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters and their performance analysis as well. In such context, a full comprehensive

simulation environment is created for a conventional network and MPLS applied over that traditional network to evaluate the comparative performance of network traffic behavior and the functionalities of MPLS signaling protocols as well. Finally, the results are evaluated and analyzed, and their behaviors are shown by means of graphical manner.

Keywords: Label Switching, MPLS, LDP, CR-LDP, RSVP, RSVP-TE, QoS, Network Simulator (NS2).

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INTRODUCTION
The key functionalities of Traffic Engineering (TE) are resource reservation, faulttolerance and optimum Resources utilization. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology allows traffic engineering and enhances the performance of the existing protocols over the traditional IPv4 network [1, 2]. The central idea of MPLS is to attach a short fixed-length label to packets at the ingress router of the MPLS domain. Packet forwarding then depends on the tagged label, not on longest address match, as in traditional IP forwarding. A router placed on the edge of the MPLS domain, named Label Edge Router (LER) that is associated to a label on the basis of a Forwarding Equivalence Class (FEC). In the MPLS network, internal routers that perform swapping and label-based packet forwarding are called Label Switching Routers (LSRs) [3]. Since MPLS by itself cannot provide service differentiation, combination of DiffServ with MPLS architectures seems to be a useful solution to provide QoS to multimedia traffic while effectively using network resources. The result of this integration is the DiffServ-aware Traffic Engineering (DS-TE). In order to enable DS-TE functionalities, DiffServ, MPLS and TE-related information have to be exchanged among routers through the control plane by means of a

-LDP) [5] and Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE) [1, 6]. The focus of the paper is on the comparative performance analysis between conventional and MPLS network.

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TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
In this simulation, the default specifications for G.711 (64) codec has been considered [2], where bidirectional Constant Bit Rate (CBR), User Datagram Protocol (UDP) are used as Voice over IP services and streaming media . It should be noted that for any given codec, as the voice payload per packet is increased while the net bandwidth use is reduced. Fewer packets are needed to transmit the same amount of data that reduce the net overhead. The calculations are computed as follows: Voice packet size = layer 2 header + (IP + UDP + RTP) Header + voice payload. Voice packets per second = codec bit rate / voice payload size Bandwidth = voice packet size x voice packets per second. In this experiment, compression of IP, UDP and RTP headers for G.711 (64) codec are not taken into consideration. Thus the UDP packet size in bytes = UDP header + RTP header + voice payload = 8 + 12 + 160 = 180bytes. For the Largest Packet Size, Ethernet MTU size packets are considered. Ethernet MTU = 1500bytes. Of these 1500 bytes, the IP headers use 20bytes, leaving 1480 bytes for the UDP packet (including header and payload). Thus UDP packets of 1480bytes are considered. And for creating worst scenario, another UDP packet of 830 bytes and Drop Tail queue type have also been considered.

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SIMULATION AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

We have used NS2 to create the topology as shown in figure 1 for both traditional and MPLS networks. The simulation has been developed to emphasize the impact of Traffic Engineering over the traditional network. Nodes 0 and 1 are used as source and nodes 6 and 7 are used as destination.

Figure 1: Simulation Topology

In traditional network path (via node 2_4_5) is not utilized, while path (via node 2_3_5)is over utilized. Packets are lost due to congestion at node 2 and we have observed same situation when no traffic engineering is applied for MPLS network. The information table 1 of node LSR2 act as Label Edge Router (LER) shown below, where egress router characterize FEC, label and LSPID. Labels of this table are distributed based on the control mode that is chosen to be executed at node LSR2. During packet transmission, label swapping is done by each intermediate node. Routing information is stored in LIB, PFT and ERB tables using mapping message from egress router to ingress router(LSR2 to LSR7) and vice versa.

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Symmetric Network without MPLS

In MPLS network, node 2 to node 5 is defined as LSR nodes. We have considered LSR2 as ingress and LSR5 as egress where the path through node 2_3_5 considered as shortest path. Due to the congestion at node 2, traffic engineering is applied for MPLS network. Traffic follows the alternative path (via node 2_3_5).

Figure 3: Symmetric Network with MPLS

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ANALYTICAL REPORT
The figure 4 below shows the throughput of received packets (MB) for each flow of traffic from source nodes before applying traffic engineering where received level is approximately 0.9 MB for node 6 and 0.6 MB for node 7.

Figure 4: Throughput of a traditional network.

Figure 5: Throughput of a MPLS network. After applying the Traffic Engineering in MPLS, network congestion as well as packet received level is improved. Traffic follows the path (via nodes 2_4_6) as an explicit route. Throughput of MPLS network shown in figure 5 where received level is approximately 1.4 MB
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up to 3 sec then the curve slowly goes down at 4.5 sec it is almost 1 MB for node 6 and almost 1 MB for node 7.

Table shows the comparison between traditional & MPLS Figures (6 and 7) below show (graphically) the number of packet drop behavior for both Traditional and MPLS network with respect to time. Figures (6 and 7) indicate the rapid fluctuation of packets. The average number of packets drop are approximately 6 and 2 for traditional and MPLS network respectively.

Figure 6: Packet drop Behaviors of Traditional Network

Figure 7: Packet drop Behaviors of MPLS Network

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Table given below shows the total number of packets transmitted from sources, received by destination nodes and dropped due to congestion for both traditional and MPLS network. Packet loss is much less in MPLS network than that of traditional network. Destination nodes and dropped due to congestion for both traditional and MPLS network. Packet loss is much less in MPLS network than that of traditional network.

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