For businesses wanting to increase the efficiency with which they transmit data and the quality of that data, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) may be the answer.
“MPLS is a transport method used to direct and move different types of data from router to router, or between nodes inside of a network,” says Brad Shannon, a senior sales engineer with Comcast. “It does this with virtual links between the routers and nodes by assigning specific labeling prefixes to the data packets, which are then forwarded to their respective destinations.”
Smart Business spoke with Shannon about how implementing MPLS at your company can help move your business forward.
How does MPLS differ from a traditional routed IP network?
The movement of data is different. The traditional IP routing structure requires examining the routing table of each router. As a result, at each stop, the router has to go into the routing table and look for the next network address.
MPLS doesn’t have to do that. It is more connection-based, as opposed to just address-to-address. The advantage of this is in using switching technology rather than just a routing table. All it has to do is look at the tag in front of the data to route it to the correct destination. That speeds up transmission and requires less central processing unit (CPU) usage.
Traditional IP uses protocols such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which will always choose shortest path first but which make no consideration for any kind of traffic congestion or other issues. On the other hand, with MPLS, the network provider or the customer has the ability to put constraints on the network that can manage the traffic flow. The user has the option to tell that data where to go. So the data will still take the shortest path, but it will consider congestion, as well.
What kinds of companies can benefit from MPLS?
Almost any company could benefit. It really depends on the size of the business, how much bandwidth it has and its need to do cloud computing. Any company that has multiple points in its network or different types of infrastructure can take advantage of this service because it encompasses all of those. It should be similar to a platform that you can apply to all of your services, so any company that has any mixture of circuits such as T1s, Frame Relay, or Ethernet in place can implement MPLS and converge them all together in one standard platform.