MPLS Considered Helpful

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MPLS Considered Helpful

• Bruce Daviebsd_at_cisco.com

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• Im not bitter

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MPLS

• Widely believed to stand for Multiprotocol Label
  Switching
• Would it have been more popular if IP switching
  were not already taken?
• But in reality MPLS is short for Minneapolis

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The Midwestern Grassy Knoll

• As MPLS becomes more and more dominant in the
  IETF, the IETF keeps circling back to Minneapolis
• Coincidence or conspiracy? You be the judge.

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MPLS Trends
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MPLS Trends
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MPLS Benefits 1 2

• An intellectual honeypot for demonstrably
  inferior research
• Simplication of Sigcomm Review process
• If (title contains MPLS) then
• strong_reject true
• else
• review paper
• Research on more advanced algorithms possible

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• Im not bitter

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The Shenker Experiment

• Davie, B., and Shenker, S. The impact of
  steganography on service differentiation a
  game-theoretic approach
• Davie, B., and Shenker, S. Solving the major
  problems in routing, addressing, congestion and
  scaling using MPLS a game-theoretic approach

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MPLS Benefit 3 TTL hiding

• Providers can hide the internal topology from
  pesky grad students
• Moving from ATM to MPLS carries no increased hop
  count penalty
• Ongoing research TTL incrementing for IP

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MPLS Benefit 4 Spam Protection

• Need an IP address to receive spam
• Im rejecting all packets that have an IP header
  right above the L2 header
• Here is my MPLS label dont tell the spammers

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MPLS-based spam protection

• MPLS labels are link-local in scope
• If you tell my label to spammers, I can pick
  another one (new business card needed)
• Research
• How you ensure the right label is on your packets
  when they arrive at my link
• Virtual business card distribution protocols

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• Im not bitter