Unless you’ve been living under a router for the past few years, you’ve heard about the benefits of services based on multi-protocol label switching (MPLS).

MPLS affords the ability to integrate voice, video and data across a common platform that delivers quality of service (QoS), improves performance and availability, and provides a variety of VPN and LAN-interconnect services.

Moreover, it provides a scalable range of services: unlike frame relay, which was originally designed to operate at speeds of under T3 (45 Mbit/s), or ATM, whose minimal bandwidth was T1 (1.5 Mbit/s), MPLS-based services scale from low-bandwidth to very high bandwidth (no defined upper limit).

Most companies are either moving to, or considering a move to, MPLS-based services. In recent benchmarks conducted by Nemertes Research, uptake of MPLS-based services almost doubled between 2004 and 2006, growing from 24% to 42%, with more than 50% of participants saying they were using, or planned to use, MPLS-based services by the end of 2006.

The trend was even more pronounced among companies with global operations, 72% of whom said they were using, or planned to use, MPLS-based services by year-end 2006. At the same time, interest in services such as frame relay and ATM is falling dramatically.

This package of stories includes a quiz that you can take to determine whether MPLS is right for your network, a detailed explanation of MPLS, a three-step process for moving to MPLS, plus five reasons why companies are migrating.

Next: Is MPLS right for you? Take this quiz >