MPLS

MPLS is standardized by the IETF in RFC 3031. It is deployed to connect as few as two facilities to very large deployments. In practice, MPLS is mainly used to forward IPprotocol data units and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) Ethernet traffic. Major applications of MPLS are telecommunications traffic engineering and MPLS VPN. MPLS works in conjunction with the Internet Protocol (IP) and its routing protocols, usually interior gateway protocols (IGPs) and supports the creation of dynamic, transparent virtual networks with support for traffic engineering, the ability to transport layer VPNs with overlapping address spaces, and for layer-2 pseudowires that are capable of transporting a variety of transport payloads (IPv4, IPv6, ATM, Frame Relay, etc.).