4. Advanced aspects and applications

The main advantages of MPLS technology lie in its ability to integrate QoS management and traffic engineering solutions into an IP network. Indeed, operators need to control their network more precisely than is possible with conventional IP routing, without giving up the flexibility it provides. Because a virtual path is created to transport IP packets, MPLS is an ideal candidate for supporting advanced traffic engineering functions and adding QoS management features in the core network. What's more, MPLS enables advanced functions to be deployed while deferring implementation complexity to network boundaries and retaining good scaling factor resistance properties.