Packet Switching
 - Connection Oriented
 - Connectionless
 - Variable length frame
 - Fixed length cell
 - IP Switching Characteristics

Layer 3 Forwarding
 - Connectionless (stateless) Operation
 - Hop by Hop Forwarding
 - Configuration Adaptive Routing
 - Reliability (or lack thereof)
 - Resilience
 - Scalability

ATM Switching Characteristics
 - Connection Oriented
 - Explicit Route Selection (PNNI)
 - Traffic Adaptive Route Selection
 - Quality of Service Selection & Enforcement

IP Routing over ATM Backbones
 - Edge Routing
 - Peering
 - Segmentation and Reassembly
 - QoS, Where is it provided?

Multi-Protocol Label Switching Concepts
 - A new paradigm for IP Routing
 - Connection Oriented IP
 - Performance Benefits
 - Traffic Engineering Benefits
 - Security Benefits
 - MPLS Terminology

MPLS Labels

 - Logical Labels vs End Point Addresses
 - Shim Labels
 - Labels in Other protocols (ATM, Frame Rela y, Ipv6)
 - Nested Labels
 - Label Scalability

MPLS Strategies
 - Hop by Hop
 - Explicit Route

MPLS Label Assignment
 - Label Distribution Protocol (LDP)
 - Constraint Based LDP (CR-LDP)
 - LDP CR-LDP Inter-working

RSVP Extensions
 - BGP Extensions

MPLS and VPNs
 - IP Tunneling
 - IPSec
 - MPLS Tunneling

MPLS and ATM
 - VPI/VCI Labels
 - Routers with ATM or ATM with Routing
 - VC and VP Merge
 - Advantages over Edge Routing

MPLS and Quality of Service
 - IP QoS Strategies
 - Diff-Serv
 - Int-Serv
 - MPLS and Diff-Serv

MPLS and the IETF
 - MPLS Charter
 - RFCs and Drafts

MPLS Vendor Implementations
 - Cisco
 - Nortel
 - Ericsson