Chapter 27. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)

In early 1997, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) established the Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) working group to produce a unified and interoperable multilayer switching standard as each vendor (Cisco Systems, Lucent, and so on) developed a proprietary multilayer switching solution, maintaining the IP control component and label-swapping components in different ways. The majority of these multilayer switching solutions required an ATM transport because they could not operate over mixed media infrastructures, such as Frame Relay, PPP, SONET, and LANs.

This chapter will review some of the history behind MPLS and the fundamental components before discussing MPLS in itself.

MPLS is an ...

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