With the emergence of newer converged services, businesses today are demanding greater performance from their networks than ever before.

MPLS replaces the hop-by-hop, individually routed packet model with a connection-oriented model that establishes 'paths' to destinations. Instead of routing each packet based upon its destination address, each packet is labeled such that it can be switched along a pre-defined path. In addition, MPLS defines traffic engineering methods that enables these paths to have associated quality-of-service attributes. Thus, a single destination may have multiple paths leading to it, with one path used for voice, one for video, and one for data.

Many carriers offer MPLS services, but Chorus has strategic alliances with the top providers including some of the companies that have been at the forefront of MPLS since its inception.

Defining MPLS
Short for Multiprotocol Label Switching, an IETF initiative that integrates Layer 2 information about network links (bandwidth, latency, utilization) into Layer 3 (IP) within a particular autonomous system--or ISP--in order to simplify and improve IP-packet exchange. MPLS gives network operators a great deal of flexibility to divert and route traffic around link failures, congestion, and bottlenecks.

From a QoS standpoint, ISPs will better be able to manage different kinds of data streams based on priority and service plan. For instance, those who subscribe to a premium service plan, or those who receive a lot of streaming media or high-bandwidth content can see minimal latency and packet loss.

When packets enter a MPLS-based network, Label Edge Routers (LERs) give them a label (identifier). These labels not only contain information based on the routing table entry (i.e., destination, bandwidth, delay, and other metrics), but also refer to the IP header field (source IP address), Layer 4 socket number information, and differentiated service. Once this classification is complete and mapped, different packets are assigned to corresponding Labeled Switch Paths (LSPs), where Label Switch Routers (LSRs) place outgoing labels on the packets.

With these LSPs, network operators can divert and route traffic based on data-stream type and Internet-access customer

Benefits of MPLS
Installing MPLS has two very visible benefits. First, a company with thousands of scattered employees can dial a four-digit extension instead of a 10-digit number to speak with another worker. Second, companies can anticipate this will save them money in long-distance calling without degrading voice quality. Additionally MPLS provides quality of service (QoS) for data transmission over the network creating superior routing and handling of information.

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