Dynamic Issues in MPLS Service Restoration

Overview

Packet loss and reordering are the most significant negative effects resulting from protection switching. In conventional MPLS networks, the detection and retransmission of out-of-order or lost packets is left to the higher layers, which in effect, degrades the overall performance. This paper proposes a signaling mechanism to minimize the impact of protection switching on packet loss and reordering. The proposed signaling protocol is general and independent of the particular MPLS protection mechanism.