[c-nsp] MPLS vs CEF

[Gert Doering]

Hi,

On Thu, Jul 01, 2010 at 09:02:09AM -0600, John Neiberger wrote:
> I'm curious about something. Let's say a company has a large internal
> network that needs to move a lot of data quickly on a regular basis,
> but just within the enterprise. If they already have CEF enabled on
> all routers, is there any performance gain to be had by then enabling
> MPLS and switching based on labels instead of using CEF alone? I'm
> just learning MPLS and I really have no reference for how it performs
> compared to CEF alone.

On Cisco devices, MPLS will not give you any performance benefits.

It will give you more flexibility (TE, L3 VPNs, EoMPLS) and you can
use devices as P-Routers that wouldn't be able to handle a full IPv4
routing table (TCAM limitation).  Of course it will also give you more
complexity and more bugs, so unless you need MPLS due to any *features*,
I'd stay clear of it.

(Now come and flame me :) )

gert
-- 
USENET is *not* the non-clickable part of WWW!
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Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert at greenie.muc.de
fax: +49-89-35655025                        gert at net.informatik.tu-muenchen.de
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