MPLS: Managing the New Internet

Traffic requirements on the Internet have changed from reliability to timeliness of delivery as different types of applications are being deployed on it. This situation has prompted the industry and IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) to develop new protocols and techniques to meet the challenges. One of the important protocols developed is MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) that allows network operators to implement traffic engineering, an important aspect of network operation that was neglected earlier. In this paper, we discuss why traffic engineering is a necessary tool in next generation Internet and discuss several examples in which MPLS traffic engineering implementation results in enhanced network performance. We also look at the recent development of GMPLS (Generalized MPLS) that provides the control plane for lambda switching, waveband switching and fiber switching.