Optimizing Application Traffic on MPLS-Enabled Network Links.

Abstract: The expectations of every user of today’s internet is becoming relatively high more especially as the internet applications are becoming steadily sensitive to time and delays. The critical nature of some of these applications is more apparent now that they are real-time. These pose a whole lot of challenges to network operators and service providers because they will not only need to provide these services to users but also ensure that these services rendered meet up to quality expectations and standards. It is therefore very necessary and important for them to provide good quality of service with appreciable good performance at no incurable costs- that is while maximizing revenue- to them. A need therefore arises for the adoption of a scalable method or tool for meeting up to these challenges. Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) stands out to be the choicest tool and key for providing these requirements because of its traffic engineering (TE) capability in IP network and as such the internet needs to be equipped with this all-embracing technology. This report presents the performance analysis of this technology (MPLS TE) vis-à-vis the traditional IP with respect to the average throughput, Quality of service rendered, delay suffered and minimization of congestions or traffic overflow in a bid to seeing how and why MPLS is more capable in optimizing traffic applications when adopted by service providers and network operators. And from the conclusion of the analysis and results it would have been established that MPLS appeared to be more capable in the optimization of traffic applications with respect to the above characteristics when compared with the traditional IP.