The MPLS WG Archive

[Jeremy Lawrence <jlawrenc@cisco.com>]

At 16:31 05/30/2000 -0700, Robert Raszuk wrote:

>David,
>
> > want to?  If you've got ATM, use it.  One of the big points about using
> > MPLS is to have one unified control plane - if you're going to run MPLS
> > through an ATM network that doesn't participat in MPLS, then you've just
>
>I am talking daily to all major ISPs worldwide deploying MPLS and nobody
>mentioned "unified control plane" as the reason to introduce MPLS into
>their network. The major reason is to be able to use applications which
>MPLS offers (Traffic Eng, MPLS-VPNs, Circuit Transport, Hierarchical
>Routing etc ...) 
>
>And if you are stuck with ATM switches which don't support MPLS your
>only option is to use generic MPLS encaplsulation over PVC to pass the
>data through.

Some of the carriers I talk to do see an IP routing/MPLS control
plane for ATM as an advantage, but not necessarily a dominant one.
So, while their medium-term plans do include use of full ATM MPLS,
use of generic MPLS over PVCs meets their requirements in the short
term.

Jeremy