The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
The internet standard denoted MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) provides a data-carrying mechanism in which data packets are transmitted between network infrastructure elements, such as routers and switchers, according to labels identifying nodes and/or networks. A label is usually carried in a label stack entry of a data packet, and the entry usually comprises a 20-bit-long label field for storing the label.
Because the size of the label field in the data packet is limited, instead of encapsulating an actual Internet Protocol (IP) address of a node in the data packet, MPLS usually uses nicknames associated with the IP addresses. The nicknames may be distributed between routers using the Label Distribution Protocol (LDP), and the routers may translate the nicknames into the actual IP addresses or prefixes using a mapping. Unfortunately, retrieving the mapping and performing the translation may be time consuming and may impede network convergence time. Further, it may increase the complexity of LDP sessions, especially when an MPLS label needs to be exchanged between non-adjacent peers due to a link or node failure. Thus, using the nicknames as labels in MPLS, instead of actual addresses, may negatively impact network performance and convergence.