Notes for Lecture-25

MCA 206: Advanced Computer Networks

1. Circuit Switching versus Packet Switching

In a circuit switched network there is a physical end to end connection created between the
communicating parties.
This connection is maintained for the duration of the call and is of a fixed data rate. The PSTN
(telephone network) is the classic example.
Circuit-switched networks require dedicated point-to-point connections during calls.
In Circuit swithcing state per connection is maintained so it is limited to scaling.

In packet switching there is no dedicated end to end connection between communicating

parties.
Individual packets are treated separately. The data rate can vary.
Voice connections - circuit switched is ok (circuit has a high percentage of utilisation because
somebody is generally always talking!)
With data connections the line is frequently idle, e.g. surfing the Web! We don’t need a
circuit-switching approach because it is inefficient.

 Circuit switching uses up the whole capacity of the line!

 Packet switching allows hosts to share the line!

Packet switching is used to optimise the use of the bandwidth available in a network and to
minimise the latency.
Packets are routed to their destination through the most expedient route.
Not all packets travelling between the same two hosts will necessarily follow the same route.
The destination computer reassembles the packets into their appropriate sequence.
It is connection-less, like IP
Packet Switching is Destination based routing hence it is slower.

2. MPLS

It stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching.

It is the latest technique that provides virtual path capability to packet(label) switches.

2.1 Motivation

To avoid some drawbacks of both circuit switching and packet switching and to increase the
utilization of bandwidth MPLS came into picture.MPLS is basically to manage the traffic within
the ISP .It combines the benefits of both Circuit switching and packet switching . It uses Circuit
switching within ISP and IP based packet switching within ISPs.

The idea behind MPLS is to attach a discrete set of labels to IP packets to perform a specific
function, without forcing routers and switches to dive into IP addresses or other information in
each packet to obtain instructions relating to that particular function.

2.2 MPLS packet Forwarding

MPLS does Label switching in which label is assigned to each IP flow. It direct a flow of IP
packets along a predetermined path across a network. This path is called a label-switched path
(LSP). LSPs are simplex; that is, the traffic flows in one direction from the head-end (ingress)
router to a tail-end (egress) router. Duplex traffic requires two LSPs: one LSP to carry traffic in
each direction. An LSP is created by the concatenation of one or more label-switched hops,
allowing a packet to be forwarded from one router to another across the MPLS domain.

When an ingress router receives an IP packet, it adds an MPLS header to the packet and forwards
it to the next router in the LSP. The labeled packet is forwarded along the LSP by each router
until it reaches the tail end of the LSP, at which point the MPLS header is removed and the
packet is forwarded based on Layer 3 information such as the IP destination address. Here the
label is not the Destination IP address determine the next route.

3. MPLS HEADER AND PACKET FORMAT

3.1 MPLS Header

MPLS Header is 32-bit.

Label (20-bit)->First 20-bits are to specify Label per flow.
CoS(Class of Service (3bit)-> It is proposed to use is to indicate perhop behavior of labeld
packet traversing Label Switch Routers.
Stack bit-> Indiacte the presence of Label Stack.
TTL(8-bit)-> It is Time To Leave filed , decremented at each LSR hop and used to throuw away
the looping packets.

Label (20 bit) Cos(3bit) S TTL(8-bit)

3.2 MPLS Packet.

MPLS fits between Layer 2 and Layer 3.

L2 Header MPLS Header L3 Header L3 Data

L2 Header MPLS Header MPLS Header L3 Header L3 Data

4. MPLS Path Recovery

Figure 1.

Suppose There is a link failure ,as shown in figure, on the path from ingress router to egress
router then there are 2 ways of replacing it.

Local Recovery(green in figure):-Choose alternate path between 2 LSR which were connected
by teh failed link. It enables a router upstream from the failure to route around the failure quickly
to the router downstream of the failure. The upstream router then signals the outage to the
ingress router, thereby maintaining connectivity before a new LSP is established.
End to End recovery(blue in figure):- Use an Alternate path from Ingress router to Egress
Router.In Later option there is some propagation dealy to know the link failure.

Detecting such a failure is by insertion of some kind of periodic keep alive in the data path of the
LSP (Note that keep alives such as OSPF hello, RSVP refresh etc. Monitoring the presence of
these keep alives at downstream nodes. All this needs extra processing.

5. MPLS Features

 (MPLS) traffic engineering software enables an MPLS backbone to replicate and expand
upon the traffic engineering capabilities of Layer 2 ATM and Frame Relay networks.
 Traffic engineering is essential for service provider and Internet service provider (ISP)
backbones. Such backbones must support a high use of transmission capacity, and the
networks must be very resilient, so that they can withstand link or node failures.
 MPLS traffic engineering provides an integrated approach to traffic engineering. With
MPLS, traffic engineering capabilities are integrated into Layer 3, which optimizes the
routing of IP traffic, given the constraints imposed by backbone capacity and topology.
 MPLS traffic engineering routes traffic flows across a network based on the resources the
traffic flow requires and the resources available in the network.
  MPLS traffic engineering employs "constraint-based routing," in which the path for a
traffic flow is the shortest path that meets the resource requirements (constraints) of the
traffic flow.
 MPLS traffic engineering gracefully recovers to link or node failures that change the
topology of the backbone by adapting to the new set of constraints.

6. What is Lembda MPLS?

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) promises to improve the performance, reliability and
service quality in packet-switched networks by bringing many of the advantages of ATM
networks to an arbitrary switched link layer while avoiding many of their disadvantages. MPLS
achieves this by taking advantage of existing routing protocols to set up virtual label-switched
paths across a set of label switching routers to identified destinations, thus requiring a packet's
layer 3 header to be interpreted only at the ingress and egress of an MPLS switching domain.
This not only reduces the packet-processing overhead but allows for multiple paths to be
established for a single destination. It allows the support for path protection, segregation of
traffic by class of service and traffic engineering.
Multiprotocol Lambda Switching extends this paradigm into the optical domain by using an
extended MPLS (or MPLS-like) control plane to control optical cross-connects. In effect instead
of "route once switch many" we then have "electrical once, optical many" or "switch once, then
transmit".
This lambda switching technology is an offshoot of an important traffic-engineering technique
called Multi-protocol Label Switching. They share the same acronym and are almost the same
thing, only with wavelengths substituting for numerical labels in the lambda version.