Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a forwarding paradigm that prepends a short label to packets, enabling routers to make forwarding decisions based on the label rather than IP destination address. Introduced by IETF (2001), MPLS was designed to enable traffic engineering, VPN creation, and fast rerouting in IP networks. While MPLS complexity is high, it remains foundational in service provider backbones for traffic engineering and Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning.