Multiprotocol Label Switching: A Comprehensive Guide covers all the fundamental concepts of this core business internet technology. It explains the importance of minimizing network traffic and optimizing routing to ensure data packets get where they need to go quickly.
It also helps businesses understand the role of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) in ensuring smooth videoconferencing experiences for employees.
What is MPLS?
MPLS is a core network infrastructure technology that delivers high-performance business internet. It creates a private network connection separate from the public internet and provides fast, efficient data transfers.
It creates dedicated paths for data packets to travel from one point in the network to another. This is a crucial aspect of the network because it eliminates issues like latency that may occur when using regular IP routing. This allows for a smoother experience when conducting videoconferences and voice-over IP (VoIP).
Once the data packet enters the network, the router labels it at the ingress point. This label tells other routers what path to take. They then use this information to send the packet straight to the end destination. This is referred to as “label switching.”
Then, when the packet reaches the destination, it’s removed from its label. The egress router will then remove the last label and send the packet. The result is a more efficient transfer of data and less hardware usage.
Another key benefit of an MPLS network is that it can prioritize traffic based on performance. This helps businesses ensure that critical applications get a robust and uninterrupted stream of data and can handle other slower or less essential apps on the same connections. This can be especially beneficial for businesses that rely on services like VoIP and videoconferencing, which require a reliable, low-latency network connection, and that answers, what is MPLS?
How is MPLS implemented?
The idea behind MPLS is to put a tag on each packet that will quickly inform devices throughout the network about the best path the data should take. This removes the need for routers to look at the IP layer of each packet and run a routing protocol to make a next-hop decision. Instead, the first router to touch a packet will read its label and know that it should send it on its way.
A packet’s first label comes from the ingress Label Edge Router (LER) placed at an MPLS domain’s entry point. The LER will use routing information to determine the appropriate label to affix to the packet and then will pass the packet through the MPLS domain with that label. Once the packet exits the MPLS domain, the LER will strip off the label, and the data packet will be treated as an ordinary IP packet.
By assigning a class of service to each label, the first router that touches a packet can separate data packets based on their performance needs. This could allow a company to reserve the fastest and lowest latency paths for real-time applications like voice and video while at the same time ensuring that best-effort traffic like emails gets adequate bandwidth.
What are the benefits of MPLS?
As the name suggests, MPLS provides many benefits, including better scalability, performance, and network reliability. It creates a set of predetermined, unidirectional pathways linking routers across the network. These pathways are called Label Switched Paths (LSPs). The ingress node or Label Edge Router (LER) encapsulates a data packet with an LSP. Once this is done, the LER directs the packet to a specific destination based on the information contained within the label.
A data packet’s label is determined by its forward equivalence class, a set of instructions dictating what type of service the packet requires. This allows for traffic engineering, which enables a network to direct different traffic types on different paths and prioritize them accordingly.
The ability to re-route packets based on their labels means the network can also handle increased link utilization without a noticeable impact on the end-user experience. It can also prioritize delay-tolerant traffic over slower, less congested routes.
MPLS offers scalability and can work with other technologies and protocols, such as virtual private networks, traffic engineering, and QoS. However, because it is designed for point-to-point communication, it isn’t suitable for connecting to cloud applications. Moreover, it can require dedicated hardware and is expensive to implement.
What are the pitfalls of MPLS?
MPLS allows enterprises to prioritize data traffic for mission-critical applications like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or real-time video conferences. It’s also a scalable network technology that can support bandwidth-intensive applications and provide a better quality of service (QoS) than traditional IP routing connections.
Unlike the public internet, where each router must decide where to send incoming packets based on long network addresses, MPLS encapsulates packets with information about their routes. This eliminates the need for routers to look up complicated routing tables at every stop, speeding up data transmission.
Each incoming packet is assigned a label when it enters an MPLS network. The first router that handles the packet, called an ingress node, determines what kind of label to apply based on its destination address. The next router in the path will read that label and predetermine the route it should follow. This speeds up data transmission and reduces the cumulative delay caused by routers’ thinking’ about how to route a packet.
While MPLS is a reliable network option that has been in use for decades, it can be expensive to implement and manage. For instance, if your organization is constantly growing, you may need to purchase new hardware to scale up your MPLS network. Additionally, when you work with an MPLS network provider, you must give up some control over your data, which can concern many organizations.
