The MPLS drill — enter wearing 17, leave as plain IP — and the 45→45 plant
The same packet, the same four routers, twice: once as plain IP with a longest-prefix match at every hop, and once inside an LSP where only the last router ever looks at an address.
The label-switched path
The packet on the wire
This router’s lookup
bitsarebits.com · CSE 316 — Data Communication & Networking · MPLS label switching