Go CCIE Go!! - A Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert

Hi guys,

I’m reading lots of different material on MPLS and all these sources talk about how one of the benefits of MPLS is speed.

They all say that label swapping is faster than route table lookup. They also talk about other benefits to using MPLS but I’m wondering how much of a benefit is speed.

I’m not sure I’m buying this. My hunch is that this speed “benefit” is being propagated mostly by MARKETING people, not technical engineers.

Why would doing a label lookup instead of a route table lookup be any faster?

And, even if we accept the premise that switching labeled packets through a network is faster than plain old ip routing, how much faster is this really?

Are there some large networks where the difference in speed makes a big difference in overall performance?

Have there been any studies that quantify how much faster using MPLS is versus legacy IP routing?

So, basically, I’m trying to get some perspective on this speed thing to understand if this is negligible benefit, a minor benefit or a major benefit and under what scenarios would result in which level of benefit.

Thanks, Tim