Multiprotocol laber switching (MPLS) and differentiated services (DS) as quality of service (QoS) solutions

Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) has been deployed by some major carriers in recent years, as the Internet has matured to be the most dominant network and many current Internet applications require better quality of service (QoS), such as better reliability, delay, jitter, and bandwidth. The main task for solving QoS problems in the Internet protocol (IP) is to control congestion and bursts of traffic. However, this has proven to be very difficult to achieve, mainly due to IP's connectionless characteristics. MPLS provides powerful features that have resulted in major carriers adopting the MPLS virtual private network (VPN) in the past couple of years. Most important features of MPLS are listed in section 6. As I surveyed MPLS and DS, I have concluded that adopting MPLS with DS is a good QoS solution due to all the features and scalability. I also concluded that MPLS is the major IP backbone network and DS is widely used in the Internet in the near future, as ATM and frame relay gradually disappear someday. Therefore, adopting MPLS as a backbone network soon is a critical step for the success of network carriers and enterprises