MPLS Data plane vs Control Plane

MPLS Control Plane

--> MPLS control plane indicates how the updates are sent from one PE router and to other PE router.

--> MPLS control plane is used to build FIB table from the information of Routing Information base and  LFIB table based upon label exchange protocol.

--> The control plane makes use of a label exchange protocol to create and maintain labels internally, and to exchange these labels with other devices.

--> The label exchange protocol binds labels to networks learned via a routing protocol.

--> Label exchange protocols include MPLS Label Distribution Protocol (LDP), the older Cisco Tag Distribution Protocol (TDP), and BGP (used by MPLSVPN). Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) is used by MPLS TE to accomplish label exchange.

--> The LFIB table includes label values and associations with the outgoing interface for every network prefix.

MPLS Data Plane

--> MPLS data plane indicates how the data will flow from  one PE router to PE router.

--> The data plane is independent of the type of routing protocol or label exchange protocol being used.

-->  The data plane forwards packets to the appropriate interface based on the information in the LFIB or the FIB tables.