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MULTIPROTOCOL LABEL SWITCHING
18.1 WHY MPLS?
Since its inception, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) has received a lot of attention in the research community, has been in the headlines in the technical news, and has achieved importance in the marketing strategies of vendors. Noteworthily, MPLS is one of the few examples of networking technology that found the consensus of virtually all vendors of core IP routers, Internet Service Providers, and telecommunications operators, that is, it is the one technology that finally achieves the long sought convergence between the information technology and the telecommunications worlds.
MPLS importance stems from its potential to make IP networks in general and the Internet in particular what have been traditionally called public networks—that is, networks on which operators provide services to be sold. Public networks, domain of the telecommunications world, have been typically providing services with known quality so that they can be the object of contracts between providers and their customers and can be sold for a significant amount of money.
18.1.1 The Onion That Makes Telcos Cry
Mainly due to the success of the Internet with its steady growth and ubiquitous reach, IP has for a long time shown its predominance as the preferred protocol and has more lately become the one protocol on which to base each application. However, network operators have been for many years compelled to deploy several other technologies to ...
