Some practical use cases for MPLS

[Mitrixsen]

Hello, everyone.

I've recently started working in the ISP space so I am still getting familiar with SP technologies.

I have a quick question regarding MPLS. Ever since my CCNA and NP Enterprise studies, I viewed MPLS as a WAN technology that can be used to interconnect your customers' sites. This is accomplished by configuring VRFs, MPLS, MP-BGP, and so on. I would like to expand beyond this and figure out what else can MPLS be used for.

My question is, can an ISP still benefit from using MPLS if they don't have any customers with sites to connect? Maybe they have customers that simply require basic internet connectivity.

Would a potential benefit and use case be the fact that MPLS allows us to run a BGP-free core? So even if someone is providing just internet and some other services, would it be considered a good approach to configure MPLS on top of their infrastructure so the P routers don't have to run BGP and maintain a full routing table?

I understand that a lot of these things are "it depends", I am just looking for some common reasons to run MPLS.

Thank you!
David

[balaji.bandi · Accepted solution]

My question is, can an ISP still benefit from using MPLS if they don't have any customers with sites to connect? Maybe they have customers that simply require basic internet connectivity.

Its not only customer, Provider uses to connect their own PoP to cater different services.

https://blog.ipspace.net/2024/07/what-exactly-is-mpls

[Harold Ritter · Accepted solution]

Hi @Mitrixsen ,

You are quite right when you say that BGP free core is one major benefit of using MPLS. Another one would be that using MPLS in the core network would allow the configuration of traffic engineering.

Also bear in mind all the services that can be delivered using MPLS, such L2VPN, L3VPN, 6PE, etc.