In 1996, Cisco took a dramatic step at the IETF in requesting a BOF to discuss standardizing tag switching. Tag switching is a technology that was pioneered by Cisco to establish a common control plane across IP and ATM networks. That same year, Cisco shipped the first implementation of tag switching in software release 12.0(1)A. In less than a decade, tag switching, or as it later became known through the standardization process, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), has become a leading technology for IP-enabled services. More than 250 service providers around the globe have delivered services based on the robust Cisco MPLS roadmap, and a growing number of enterprises are also deploying MPLS to meet internal IT demands. Why is MPLS such a driving force in the industry? The attributes of MPLS enable customers to easily separate customer or user traffic through a label (or tagging mechanism) much like the postal service forwards mail with a postal or zip code rather than the full address. Separating traffic based on labels lends itself to a virtual private network (VPN) service. Furthermore, MPLS allows providers to direct or reroute traffic through the Cisco traffic-engineering mechanisms. Providers can differentiate services through quality of service (QoS), delivering a gold, silver, and bronze offering. MPLS is now advancing to meet increasing requirements for voice- and video-based services and supporting interconnections across service provider domains to reach new markets or meet multinational customer sites. Ultimately, MPLS is evolving to enable a converged packet network that allows providers to migrate existing Layer 2 services and their IP-based services across a robust common infrastructure. The concept of MPLS is also extended to General MPLS or GMPLS for IP + Optical requirements to deliver dynamic bandwidth allocation. Here are just a few examples of the impact MPLS has on the industry:
We hope that this book will help you realize the business opportunity from MPLS-based services.
|