By:● Lesly Sandoval● Gino McCarty● Adam Cranford

Multiprotocol Label Switching(MPLS)

Prof. Mostafa AmmarComputer Networks IISpring 2014

● 80’s & 90’s - Internet

● The “Fish Problem”

● 1990 - ATM

○ Scalability and overhead

● 1995 - Internet explosion

● 1996 - Cisco Tag Switching

● 1997 - IETF MPLS group

History

Lowest Cost path to destination

● Switching based on fixed 20

bit labels

● Decoupling routing and

forwarding

● Explicitly Routed Tunnel

○ Label Stacking

What is MPLS?

● Label Edge Router (LER)

● Label Switch Router (LSR)

● Forwarding Equivalence Class (FEC)

● Label Switch Path (LSP)

● Forwarding Information Table (FIT)

What is MPLS?

Data Plane● IP Forwarding Table● Label Forwarding Table

Control Plane ● IP Routing protocols

● IP Routing table

● Label Information Based (LIB)

● Label Distribution Protocol

MPLS Applications

● Traffic engineering (MPLS-TE)

● Services:

○ VPN

○ AToM

○ QoS, DSCP, CoS - Bandwidth Management

MPLS Applications

● Dynamic

● Load and Delay Based Traffic

Management

● Replacement for ATM-PVC which

are Fully Meshed

● RSVP (Resource Reservation

Protocol)

Traffic Engineering

VPN Service Types

● Layer 2○ Customer Handles all

Routing

● Layer 3○ ISP Participates in

Routing○ MP-BGP

Anything over MPLS (AToM)● L2 packetized encapsulation

○ HDLC (High Level Data Link Control)○ Frame Relay○ ATM○ Ethernet*

■ VLAN Trunking

MPLS Network

Class of Service Bit Field

● Experimental Bits

● RED Behavior

Queuing Design and QOS

● QOS○ Quality of Service

● DSCP - Label○ Differentiated Services Code

Point

○ COS - Class Of Service

Vendors

Hardware Providers

Cisco 7600 VS CSR

3 Slot Chassis15 Mpps forwarding Rate

240 Gbps throughput

CISCO 7603 CISCO CSR

1152 Slots

922 Tbps total Throughput

MPPS : million packets per second , Cisco Specific metric

Service Providers

MegaPath Backbone

MegaPath: Scenario 1● Traditional Voice

Services require a separate dedicated connections

● Modern VoIP services allow integrated IP and Voice Traffic

MegaPath: Scenario 1● Using MPLS allows the

company to have a single dedicated line for voice and data

● All data including voice and video conferencing benefit

MegaPath: Scenario 2● Nationwide corporate

network using Point-to-Point connection

● Company must manage all connections and communications in house

● Massive management overhead

MegaPath: Scenario 2● Service providers(SP)

like MegaPath offer a way to connect the companies entire network

● Connection is through SP’s MPLS backbone and is now managed by the SP

● Entire network benefits from reliability, QoS and security services

Questions