Multiprotocol Label Switching
Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) is a mechanism used within computer network infrastructures to speed up the time it takes a data packet to flow from one node to another. It enables computer networks to be faster and easier to manage by using short path labels instead of long network addresses for routing network packets. MPLS circuits are not Internet circuits. While these circuits usually ride the same backbone as the carrier’s Internet traffic, they aren’t public circuits, and they have a private IP address structure. The benefits of MPLS are: Virtual Private Networking (VPN), Traffic Engineering (TE), Quality of Service (QoS), Any Transport over MPLS (AToM)