Fundamentals & Foundational Con...: 1.mpls History,

Receives a labeled packet, pops the label, and forwards the original IP packet to the final destination.

The ability to steer traffic away from congested links. 1.MPLS History, Fundamentals & Foundational Con...

Receives a plain IP packet, looks up the destination, and pushes the first label. Receives a labeled packet, pops the label, and

In the mid-1990s, routers struggled to keep up with increasing internet traffic. Standard IP routing required a "longest prefix match" lookup in a routing table for every single packet, which was computationally expensive. In the mid-1990s, routers struggled to keep up

A predetermined, unidirectional path through the MPLS network. Think of this as a virtual "tunnel."

Engineers from companies like Cisco (Tag Switching) and IBM (ARIS) proposed a way to combine the intelligence of Layer 3 routing with the speed of Layer 2 switching.

Routers maintain a Label Forwarding Information Base (LFIB). When a packet arrives, the router looks at the label, finds the outgoing interface and the new label in the LFIB, and sends it on its way. 3. Foundational Components