Verification of MPLS traffic engineering techniques

Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) provides a framework for doing more flexible traffic engineering via its explicit routing capability. In this paper, MPLS routing models with two different objectives that utilise MPLS explicit routing are presented and discussed. The objectives are to minimise the network cost and maximise the minimum residual link capacity. The model that maximises the minimum residual link capacity is found to perform substantially better, in terms of network throughput and packet loss. The performance is verified by using the well-known ns-2 simulator under different network loads. The MPLS techniques described in this paper can substantially improve network throughput and user perception of quality in comparison to traditional intra-domain routing methods.