Introducing Basic MPLS Concepts

Outline
What Are the Foundations of Traditional IP Protocol?
Basic MPLS Features
Benefits of MPLS
What Are the MPLS Architecture Components?
What Are LSRs?

Foundations of Traditional IP Routing

Routing protocols are used to distribute Layer 3 routing information.

Forwarding decision is made based on:

Packet header
Local routing table

Routing lookups are performed at every hop.

Every router need full IP routing table information.

Destination-based routing lookup is needed on every hop.

Basic MPLS Features

MPLS leverages both IP routing and CEF switching.

MPLS is a forwarding mechanism in which packets are forwarded based on labels.

MPLS was designed to support multiple Layer 3 protocols

Typically, MPLS labels correspond to destination networks (equivalent to traditional IP forwarding).

Benefits of MPLS

MPLS supports multiple applications including:

Unicast and multicast IP routing
VPN
TE
QoS
AToM
MPLS decreases forwarding overhead on core routers.

MPLS can support forwarding of non-IP protocols.

 In Traditional IP routing a packet is forwarded using IP Routing Lookup technology.

In MPLS a packet is forwarded using flow label technology.

MPLS Traditional IP