Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS)

Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is used for fast data packet switching and routing system, it provides a target network traffic, routing, forwarding and switching capabilities. More specifically, it has various forms of traffic management mechanisms. MPLS independent of the second and third layer protocols, such as ATM and IP. It provides a way to IP address mapping has a fixed length for the simple labels for different packet forwarding and packet switching technology. It is the existing routing and switching protocol interface, such as IP, ATM, Frame Relay, resource reservation protocol (RSVP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and so on.
 In MPLS, data transmission occurs in the label switched path (LSP) on. Each LSP is along the path from the source to the terminal node on the label sequence. Now use some label distribution protocols such as Label Distribution Protocol (LDP), RSVP, or built on top of some of the protocols routing protocols, such as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and OSPF. Because fixed-length labels are inserted into each cell of a packet or the beginning, and the hardware can be used to link the rapid exchange of the two packages, so make possible the rapid exchange of data.
 MPLS primarily designed to solve network problems, such as network speed, scalability, quality of service (QoS) management and traffic engineering, but also for the next generation broadband IP backbone network address such issues as management and service requests. In this section, we focus on common MPLS framework. For LDP, CR-LDP and RSVP-TE can refer to the specific content of individual files.
Multi Protocol Label Switching MPLS was originally proposed to improve forward speed of the. Compared with traditional IP routing, data forwarding it, only the edge of the network of IP header, instead of at each hop IP header, thus saving processing time. MPLS originated in the IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4), its core technology can be extended to a variety of network protocols, including IPX (Internet Packet Exchange), Appletalk, DECnet, CLNP (Connectionless Network Protocol) and so on. "MPLS" in "Multiprotocol" refers to support multiple network protocols.