A Comparative Analysis of Packet Fragmentation with MPLS Unicast IP Routing and OSPF in an IP-based Network

Abstract

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is acknowledged and widely used to overcome drawbacks in traditional Internet Protocol (IP) routing. This paper presents network performance on the effect of packet fragmentation over IP and MPLS networks. Performance analysis on Windows XP is evaluated which tested in an environment using GNS3 which emulates on real environment telecommunication network. Network performance observed on Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) with and without MPLS label implementation accompanied by combination of different data sizes and different Maximum Transfer Units (MTUs). Round-Trip-Time (RTT) is calculated on throughput and packet loss. Results present an analysis performance on different protocols, data sizes and produced MTUs. OSPF provides better RTT and throughput compared to MPLS with default MTU setting. Better RTT and calculated throughput performance is obtained by increasing the MTU for interface, IP and MPLS. RTT for MPLS is slightly higher due to the introduction of label to each packet send. Packet loss behavior is similar in both OSPF and MPLS which more visible when fragmentation happened. This study concludes that upon packet fragmentation, performances are degraded