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IETF Debates On: MPLS Is Bad

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the future-of-the-internet dept.

A reader writes "MPLS, or Multi-protocol Label Switching, seems to be a popular choice for router vendors nowadays until two AT&T researchers argue it differently. They "say MPLS create serious network management challenges for Internet backbone providers." "Even more dire are their warnings about potential security and privacy problems for companies that deploy MPLS-based VPNs." This issue will be discussed on an IETF meeting held this week in London. More details here ." Related to the IETF [?] , this submission came in: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is now meeting in London for IETF-51. You can watch multicast sessions. "

2 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Well... It doesn't suck but... by BigScoob · · Score: 4, Interesting

    MPLS was great before we had ASIC's that were doing full next hop lookups at OC-48 and OC-192 speeds... Now with routers actually forwarding at those line rates, the need for MPLS has dwindled... But... I believe that the ability to provide the amount of traffic engineering and VPN's afforded with MPLS is a viable solution that is here to stay for a good while. Back when I was working on a 38 POP network with multiple private peering points MPLS was going to provide a lot of the benefits of ATM on our POS network with out the fscking cell tax... These days things are a little different in the office, but I still am waiting for a good excuse to fire the MPLS up on the damn M-40's and have a good time...

  2. Re:User's view by slashnik · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The alternative would have been a private network over leased lines or frame relay links. We have a virtual private network in that all sites are linked together over a 3rd party core providing seperacy of data / routing protocols from other users of the 3rd party core. Where security is required we still encrypt data using IPSEC over the MPLS VPN.

    With the MPLS solution there is "single hop" connectivity between all sites at all times.

    Wouldn't there be high management overhead to reproduce with IPSEC tunnels?

    slashnik