Control plane: MPLS
Provides a framework for routing evolution
- De-couples forwarding from routing control
- Explicit routing
- Constraint-based (QoS) routing, load-balancing
- Traffic engineering: aggregating traffic flows into trunks, and mapping them onto pre-defined paths
Provides a framework for integrating IP, ATM, and frame-relay cores
- Allows re-engineering of the ATM control plane, and the IP forwarding plane