Multi-Protocol Label

Switching

Computer Networks
Dr. Jorge A. Cobb
Background
 It was meant to improve routing performance on the
Internet
• Routing is difficult using CIDR (longest prefix
matching)

 MPLS is similar to virtual circuits

• Only a fixed-sized label is used (like a VCID) with local
scope

 It is very datagram oriented though

• It uses IP addressing and IP routing protocols

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What is it good for?
 To enable IP capability on devices that cannot
handle IP traffic

 Forward packets along “explicit routes” (pre-

calculated routes not used in “regular” routing)

 To support certain virtual private network services

 Note: “performance” is not above

• Router hardware-software have improved so much is
not an issue anymore

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Destination Based Forwarding

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Labels for Destination-Based Forwarding
 A label is allocated for each prefix in its table
• The label is chosen locally
• Think of them as indices into the routing table

 Router advertises this to its neighbors

• “label distribution protocol” (LDP)

 Packets addressed to the prefix should, for

efficiency, be tagged with the label.

 The label of an incoming packet is “swapped” before

being forwarded to the next router.
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Remarks
 Rather than longest prefix-matching we use label
matching
• Labels can be very efficient, simply an index into the
routing table

 Regular IP routing is still used

• E.g., we could use OSPF to determine the routes
• Then we use labels for efficiency in per-hop routing

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Remarks (contd)
 Most importantly, we can use ATM switches for IP

 ATM
• Virtual circuit oriented
• Fixed packet (small 53 bytes), known as cells
• Special hardware for fast switching from input line to
output line

 We can turn “ATM Cell switches” into “label

switching routers” usually only by changing the
software and not the hardware of the switch.

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Placement of “labels”

For Ethernet, the “protocol number used” is 0x8847 for MPLS

I.e., the “protocol number” of IP is not used.

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 IP over ATM (Before MPLS)

 We had every router with a VC over an ATM network to every other

router
• Known as an “overlay” network

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Why did we used to do this?
 Was desirable because ATM switches had higher
throughput than IP routers

 This no longer the case

 However:
• There is though a lot of ATM hardware still out there
• Plus ATM provides other features
• Circuit emulation, virtual circuit services

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ATM switches as LSRs (using MPLS)
 ATM switches are now “peers” of MPLS routers

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Advantage of MPLS vs overlay
 Each MPLS router has fewer “adjacencies” (i.e. neighbors)

 This reduces the OSPF traffic to the router significantly

• In OSPF you receive the topology of the entire network via
each of your neighbors.

 Each router now has a view of the entire topology

• Not possible in overlay networks (ATM network “black box”)
• Routers have better control of paths in case of link failures
• In overlay networks, the ATM switches would do the rerouting

 ATM switches may still support native ATM if desired.

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How to send IP packets?
 IP packets (big) are fragmented (cut up) into 48 byte
pieces
 Each piece is added to an ATM cell and sent over
the VC to the “destination” (last switch in the ATM
path)
 Packet is reassembled at destination
• We can use a special VCID (say 0) if the destination is
the next hop (for communication with my neighbor,
e.g., hello messages in OSPF)
• VCIDS for other destinations are setup in the same
way as we did in slides 5-8.

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GMPLS
 “Generalized” MPLS

 Used in optical networks

• Turn an optical switch (e.g. SONET) into a LSR

 Give the IP routers a better view/control of the optical

network

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Explicit Routing
 Similar to “source routing” but done by a router
 “Fish” network due to its shape
 R1 -> R7 : R1 R3 R6 R7
 R2 -> R7 : R2 R3 R4 R5 R7
• Perhaps we want to balance the load somehow
 Cannot be done with regular IP
• IP routing does not look at the source of the message

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Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP)
 How to establish a “labeled path” from R1 to R7 and
R2 to R7?
• (note: two labels at R3, one for R1 and one for R2)

 Use RSVP
• It sets up a “path” from a source to a destination
• It reserves resources (optional)
• It is basically like setup of a VC in ATM

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Explicit Route Advantages
 Traffic Engineering
• You can control how much traffic travels through some
point in the network
• This is done by controlling the paths taken by traffic

 Fast-rerouting
• You can bypass broken links quickly with explicit
routing.
• No need to wait for a routing protocol (OSPF) to react.
• How?
• Keep track of two paths, regular path and backup path
• If the regular path fails use the backup

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Virtual Private Networks
 We can do VPN’s with MPLS.
 Let us review VPN’s’ with regular IP first.
 Goal
• Controlled connectivity
 Virtual Private Network
• A group of connected networks
• Connections may be over multiple networks not
belonging to the group (e.g. over the Internet)
• E.g., joining the networks of several branches of a
company into a “private internetwork”

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Virtual Private Networks

C
A B

K L
M

C
K L

A B
M

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Tunneling
 IP Tunnel
• Virtual point-to-point link between an arbitrarily
connected pair of nodes

Network Network
1 Internetwork 2
R1 R2
IP Tunnel

10.0.0.1
IP Dest = 2.x IP Dest = 10.0.0.1 IP Dest = 2.x
IP Payload IP Dest = 2.x IP Payload
IP Payload

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Tunneling
 Advantages of tunneling
• Transparent transmission of packets over heterogeneous
networks
• Only need to change relevant routers (end points)
• Coupled with encryption, gives you a secure private
internetwork.
• End-points of tunnels my have features (multicast) not
available in other Internet routers.
• Useful for mobile routing.
 Disadvantages
• Increases packet size
• Processing time needed to encapsulate and decapsulate
packets
• Management at tunnel-aware routers
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Virtual Private Networks
 We can do similarly with MPLS
 We can connect different sites with an MPLS tunnel
 We can send regular IP traffic through the tunnel, or
any other type of traffic.

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“Layer 2” tunnel
 Use MPLS to provide a tunnel between two
• LANs (Ethernet, etc)
• ATM points
 Any data can be “wrapped” with a label
• It need not be IP datagrams
• LSR does not look “beyond” the label

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Demultiplexing Label
 What to do with the packet once it reaches
the other side of the tunnel?

• A “demultiplexing” label needs to be added to

inform the end-point router what to do with the
packet.

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E.g., Emulate a VC
 ATM cells with a specific VCID come in at the
entrance of the tunnel

 ATM cells at the end of the tunnel should have the

appropriate VCID for the next switch after the router.

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Emulate a VC (steps)
1. An ATM cell arrives to the input LSR with VCID 101
2. The head router attaches the demultiplexing label and
identifies the emulated circuit
3. The head router attaches the tunnel label (to reach the tail
router)
4. Routers in the middle forward as usual
5. The tail router removes the tunnel label, finds the
demultiplexing label, and identifies the VC
6. The tail router modifies the VCID to the next ATM switch
value (202) and sends it to the ATM switch.

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Label Stacks
 The previous example has a stack of two labels

 You can have larger stacks of labels in the header.

 In the example
• It enables to have a tunnel
• And many VC’s within the tunnel

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“Layer 3” VPN’s
 The packet being carried is an IP packet
• Hence the name “layer 3” VPNs

 Service provider
• Has many customers
• Each customer has many sites
• These sites are linked with tunnels to appear to be one
large Internetwork
• Each customer can only reach its own sites
• The customer is isolated from the rest of the Internet
and from other customers

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