Computer Hardware Terms, Glossary and Dictionary

Tag switching, also called Label Switching, was orginally introduced by Cisco Systems, which uses tags (labels) containing forwarding information. Tag switching uses routers that sit on the periphery of the network and make forwarding decisions for all the routers in the backbone. They append this information to each packet in fixed positions in the header that can be quickly examined by interior backbone routers, saving the time involved in decoding the packet and its associated table lookups. Tag switching then was developed into the industrial standard technology called Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS).

Related Terms

tag switching