[e2e] [Fwd: State of MPLS deployments today]

[Dennis Ferguson]

David P. Reed wrote:
> At 11:30 AM 10/3/2002 -0700, Ping Pan wrote:
>> How did this topic get into this list anyway? It has nothing to do with 
>> e2e. ;-)
> 
> Yes and no.   It has nothing to do with e2e, because MPLS is putting 
> function into the network.  It has everything to do with e2e, because the 
> function in the network probably is better done outside the network in most 
> cases (especially when deriving the labels is predicated on reading the 
> content of end-to-end streams that should not be interpreted by the 
> transport layers).

That might be part of the confusion.  MPLS was solutionware searching for
problems for so many years that it has been kind of hard to keep current
with exactly what problems it was supposed to be good for.  It has since
actually found a few problems which people seem willing to attempt to solve
with it, but as far as I know none of these require the functionality you
are describing for whatever problem it is which you think MPLS is supposed
to be solving.

I hence think the answer at this point is exclusively "yes", it has nothing
to do with e2e.

Dennis Ferguson