MPLS has a unique control plane that operates in LSRs and is independent of the forwarding type in use. The LSPs and VCs can co-operate simultaneously on one backbone, and VCs may be migrated entirely to MPLS. There'll be a quiz on this later for all of you.

  • Dr. Peter Welcher, networking rock star, has an excellent two-part white paper on MPLS at http://www.mentortech.com/learn/welcher/papers/mplsintro.html. It includes several links to MPLS references and resources.
  • You can also refer to the MPLS Resource Center at http://www.mplsrc.com. Their articles section has pretty much everything.