<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><xml><records><record><source-app name="Biblio" version="7.x">Drupal-Biblio</source-app><ref-type>47</ref-type><contributors><authors><author><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Yves Vanaubel</style></author><author><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Pascal Mérindol</style></author><author><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Jean-Jacques Pansiot</style></author><author><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Benoit Donnet</style></author></authors></contributors><titles><title><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">MPLS Under the Microscope: Revealing Actual Transit Path Diversity</style></title><secondary-title><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)</style></secondary-title></titles><keywords><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">ECMP</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">LDP</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">MPLS</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">multipath</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">network discovery</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">RSVP-TE</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">traceroute</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">traffic engineering</style></keyword></keywords><dates><year><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">2015</style></year><pub-dates><date><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">10/2015</style></date></pub-dates></dates><language><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">eng</style></language><abstract><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">&lt;p&gt;Traffic Engineering (TE) is one of the keys for improving packet forwarding in&amp;nbsp;the Internet. It allows IP network operators to finely tune their forwarding&amp;nbsp;paths according to various customer needs. One of the most popular tool&amp;nbsp;available today for optimizing the use of networking resources is MPLS. On the&amp;nbsp;one hand, operators may use MPLS and label distribution mechanisms such as RSVP-TE&amp;nbsp;in conjunction with BGP to define multiple transit paths (for a given edge pair)&lt;br /&gt;verifying different constraints on their network. On the other hand, when&amp;nbsp;operators simply enable LDP for distributing MPLS labels in order to improve the&amp;nbsp;scalability of their network, another kind of path diversity may appear thanks&amp;nbsp;to the ECMP feature of IGP routing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this paper, using an MPLS labels analysis, we demonstrate that it is possible&amp;nbsp;to better understand the transit path diversity deployed within a given ISP.&amp;nbsp;More specifically, we introduce the Label Pattern Recognition (LPR) algorithm, a&amp;nbsp;method for analyzing traceroute data including MPLS information. LPR reveals&amp;nbsp;the actual usage of MPLS according to the inferred label distribution protocol and&amp;nbsp;is able to make the distinction between ECMP and TE multi-path forwarding.&amp;nbsp;Based on an extensive and longitudinal traceroute dataset obtained from CAIDA,&lt;br /&gt;we apply LPR and find that each ISP behavior is really specific in regard to its&amp;nbsp;MPLS usage. In particular, we are able to observe independently for each ISP&amp;nbsp;the MPLS path diversity and usage, and its evolution over time.&amp;nbsp;Globally speaking, the main outcomes of our study are that (&lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt;) the usage of&amp;nbsp;MPLS has been increasing over the the last five years with basic encapsulation&amp;nbsp;being predominant, (&lt;em&gt;ii&lt;/em&gt;) path diversity is mainly provided thanks to ECMP and&amp;nbsp;LDP, and, (&lt;em&gt;iii&lt;/em&gt;), TE using MPLS is as common as MPLS without path diversity.&lt;/p&gt;</style></abstract></record></records></xml>