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HOW MPLS WORK

Hi everyone it is not clear to me how mpls works. I understand that the packet that enters the first router A is assigned a label immediately after having made a lookup in the routing table. After that, when router A goes from router B to the packet, the label is removed and in the meantime it performs a lookup of the labels to be assigned to the packet, and so on for any other router that must pass through the packet. My question is how do routers know which label to assign for the packet to follow the correct path to the destination network?

2 Accepted Solutions

Accepted Solutions

Harold Ritter
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

My question is how do routers know which label to assign for the packet to follow the correct path to the destination network?

 

The router knows where to forward the packets and what label should be used via a control plane protocol (LDP, RSVP. BGP-LU or (OSPF or ISIS in the case of Segment Routing)) or via a static MPLS mapping.

 

Regards,

Harold Ritter
Sr Technical Leader
CCIE 4168 (R&S, SP)
harold@cisco.com
México móvil: +52 1 55 8312 4915
Cisco México
Paseo de la Reforma 222
Piso 19
Cuauhtémoc, Juárez
Ciudad de México, 06600
México

View solution in original post

Martin L
VIP
VIP

 

MPLS Operation is similar to Router building routing table (RIB), CEF creating Forwarding info base table (FIB) and adjacency table.  MPLS uses Label Information Base table (LIB) and Label FIB (LFIB).  LIB stores all labels known by router while LFIB stores label information only for currently used and the "best route".  To make decision about which label is "the best",  MPLS router will rely on routing protocol and Routing table (RIB).  For each route in RIB, router assigns next available label number, call "local" label and advertises it via LDP.  For each route learned via LDP, router records "remote" label, interface it came in, ID of LDP advertising router (loopback interface), and also adds its own new local label.  Note that remote label will became outgoing label later.  Each MPLS FIB table will have 2 labels (local and outgoing), prefix id and outgoing interface. Your local label is my outgoing label and vice versa. 

Regards, ML
**Please Rate All Helpful Responses **

View solution in original post

3 Replies 3

Harold Ritter
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

My question is how do routers know which label to assign for the packet to follow the correct path to the destination network?

 

The router knows where to forward the packets and what label should be used via a control plane protocol (LDP, RSVP. BGP-LU or (OSPF or ISIS in the case of Segment Routing)) or via a static MPLS mapping.

 

Regards,

Harold Ritter
Sr Technical Leader
CCIE 4168 (R&S, SP)
harold@cisco.com
México móvil: +52 1 55 8312 4915
Cisco México
Paseo de la Reforma 222
Piso 19
Cuauhtémoc, Juárez
Ciudad de México, 06600
México

Ok it's all clear and thank you for the very detailed answer. One last question. So calculating the route a priori and assigning a label to each route, the performance improves because you avoid each time executing the query in the routing table but follow the path already established a priori in the right mpls table?

Martin L
VIP
VIP

 

MPLS Operation is similar to Router building routing table (RIB), CEF creating Forwarding info base table (FIB) and adjacency table.  MPLS uses Label Information Base table (LIB) and Label FIB (LFIB).  LIB stores all labels known by router while LFIB stores label information only for currently used and the "best route".  To make decision about which label is "the best",  MPLS router will rely on routing protocol and Routing table (RIB).  For each route in RIB, router assigns next available label number, call "local" label and advertises it via LDP.  For each route learned via LDP, router records "remote" label, interface it came in, ID of LDP advertising router (loopback interface), and also adds its own new local label.  Note that remote label will became outgoing label later.  Each MPLS FIB table will have 2 labels (local and outgoing), prefix id and outgoing interface. Your local label is my outgoing label and vice versa. 

Regards, ML
**Please Rate All Helpful Responses **