Browsing by Author "Mehwesh Siddiqi"

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    MPLS tag switching with advanced security
    (2004) Khadeeja Reyaz; Mehwesh Siddiqi; Sadaf Arif
    In a normally routed environment, frames pass from a source to a destination in a hop-byhop basis. Transit routers evaluate each frame's Layer 3 header and perform a route table lookup to determine the next hop toward the destination. This tends to reduce throughput in a network because of the intensive CPU requirements to process each frame. Although some routers implement hardware and software switching techniques to accelerate the evaluation process by creating high-speed cache entries, these methods rely upon the Layer 3 routing protocol to determine the path to the destination. Unfortunately, routing protocols have little, if any, visibility into the Layer 2 characteristics of the network, particularly in regard to quality of service (QoS) and loading. Rapid changes in the type (and quantity) of traffic handled by the Internet and the explosion in the number of Internet users is putting an unprecedented strain on the Internet's infrastructure. This pressure mandates new traffic-management solutions. MPLS and its predecessor, tag switching, are aimed at resolving many of the challenges facing an evolving Internet and high-speed data communications in general. To meet these new demands, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) changes the hop-byhop paradigm by enabling devices to specify paths in the network based upon QoS and bandwidth needs of the applications. In other words, path selection can now take into account Layer 2 attributes. Before MPLS, vendors implemented proprietary methods for switching frames with values other than the Layer 3 header.