A performance study framework for Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks

Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), which was introduced by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), is widely used in communication networks to provide QoS guaranties to traffic. In this connection-oriented protocol, network failures can cause a serious disruption to critical data traffic which is unacceptable for customers who require highly reliable services. To guarantee high QoS and enhance network performance during failures, researchers have developed different recovery mechanisms for MPLS to ensure rerouting traffic from original faulty paths to alternate paths. In this paper, a comprehensive study is carried out on MPLS recovery mechanisms for protecting and restoring traffic after failure occurrence. In order to model the recovery mechanisms in MPLS networks, a new modeling framework for MPLS recovery was developed on a multi-layer approach. The new framework was designed to be generic and flexible in order to easily model network topologies with different MPLS recovery mechanisms and simulate variable parameters/scenarios for performance analysis purposes.