Recovery and bandwidth sharing techniques in MPLS networks

Failure of backbone nodes/links can have catastrophic consequences unless they are addressed in a timely manner. Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), is an increasingly popular technology that employs various recovery mechanisms from such failures. In addition to failure recovery these mechanisms minimize downtime, data loss and convergence time while also avoiding inefficient bandwidth utilization. The aim of this survey paper is to provide an overview of the recovery and bandwidth sharing techniques used by MPLS. We discuss the recovery mechanisms, as well as merits and demerits, of global and local recovery. We also present the bandwidth sharing potential of each recovery technique and discuss different protocols proposed for bandwidth sharing. Our work will be valuable to networking researchers who want to get an insight into the operation mechanism, as well as design tradeoffs, of various MPLS recovery techniques.