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Internet Protocol (IP) sends information across an IP network, such as the Internet, as a series of separate packets, each of which carries the address of the destination and is able to travel independently over different routes. The packets are reassembled at the far end.
MPLS is an underlying protocol often used to overcome problems such as delayed IP packets that would otherwise present a quality problem for business class voice (VoIP).
IP was originally saw wide-spread adopting in local area networks (LANs) within offices, with more efficient protocols such as X.25 and Frame Relay used on costly wide area network (WAN) links.
As bandwidth costs dropped in the late 90’s through the mass build-out of fibre networks and the benefits of converging multiple applications through a common protocol became apparent, IP became widespread first through the Internet and then as a unifying protocol for all types of information transfer; data, voice and multi-media.
Every host on a network, such as a computer or networked printer, is assigned a unique IP address, and as a growing number of devices become ‘IP enabled’ the number of unique address is predicted to run out. IP V6 is slowly being adopted as the successor to IP V4, with its enlarged address field providing an almost limitless number of addresses.
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