Traditional IP routing has several well-known limitations, ranging from scalability issues to poor support of traffic engineering and poor integration with Layer 2 backbones already existing in large service provider networks. With the rapid growth of the Internet and the establishment of IP as the Layer 3 protocol of choice in most environments, the drawbacks of traditional IP routing became more and more obvious.
Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a standards-approved technology for speeding up network traffic flow and making it easier to manage. MPLS involves setting up a specific path for a given sequence of packets, identified by a label put in each packet, thus saving the time needed for a router to look up the address to the next node to forward the packet to. With reference to the OSI model, MPLS allows most packets to be forwarded at Layer 2 (switching) rather than at Layer 3 (routing).
CommVerge Solutions’ experience and expertise in IP technology enables us to provide effective and innovative designs and implementations of MPLS networks. This has given customers benefits of having connectionless Layer 3 routing and forwarding with connection-oriented Layer 2 forwarding.
Functions:
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Data packets are assigned labels. Decision of forwarding is based on the label content without inspecting the packet itself. |
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Enable the creation of end-to-end circuits using any protocols and across any medium of transport. |
Benefits:
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Better reliability and performance due to the traffic management capability. |
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Better recovery framework as compared to traditional Layer 2 VPN. |
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Ability to create IP VPN based on MPLS model. |