When MPLS/SR Makes More Sense Than a Conventional VXLAN Fabric
The Default Isn't Always the Right Answer
Walk into almost any modern data center design review, and you'll hear the same recommendation: VXLAN-EVPN. It's become the de facto standard overlay for good reasons — it's vendor-neutral, runs over plain IP fabrics, integrates cleanly with BGP for control-plane scale, and every major switch vendor supports it.
But "default" and "best fit" aren't the same thing. In telco cloud, NFV infrastructure, and certain high-density compute fabrics, MPLS-native designs still outperform IP-in-IP-style overlays (VXLAN included) on three concrete axes: encapsulation overhead, traffic engineering, and fast reroute. This article breaks down why, with the mechanics underneath each claim.
Quick Primer: What We're Actually Comparing
- IP-in-IP / VXLAN-style overlays: encapsulate the original frame inside a UDP/IP header (VXLAN) or a raw IP header (plain IP-in-IP). Forwarding decisions at each hop are made by looking up the outerIP destination in a...
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