Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) is a way to provide Ethernet-based multipoint to multipoint communication over IP or MPLS networks. It allows geographically dispersed sites to share an Ethernet broadcast domain by connecting sites through pseudowires. The term sites includes multiplicities of both servers and clients. The technologies that can be used as pseudo-wire can be Ethernet over MPLS, L2TPv3 or even GRE. There are two IETF standards track RFCs (RFC 4761 and RFC 4762) describing VPLS establishment. VPLS is a virtual private network (VPN) technology. In contrast to L2TPv3, which allows only point-to-point layer 2 tunnels, VPLS allows any-to-any (multipoint) connectivity. In a VPLS, the local area network (LAN) at each site is extended to the edge of the provider network. The provider network then emulates a switch or bridge to connect all of the customer LANs to create a single bridged LAN. VPLS is designed for applications that require multipoint or broadcast access. Mesh establishment Since VPLS emulates a LAN, full mesh connectivity is required. There are two methods for full mesh establishment for VPLS: using Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and using Label Distribution Protocol (LDP). The "control plane" is the means by which provider edge (PE) routers communicate for auto-discovery and signalling. Auto-discovery refers to the process of finding other PE routers participating in the same VPN or VPLS. Signalling is the process of establishing pseudowires (PW). The PWs constitute the "data plane", whereby PEs send customer VPN/VPLS traffic to other PEs. BGP provides both auto-discovery and signalling. The mechanisms used are very similar to those used in establishing Layer-3 MPLS VPNs. Each PE is configured to participate in a given VPLS. The PE, through the use of BGP, simultaneously discovers all other PEs in the same VPLS, and establishes a full mesh of pseudowires to those PEs. With LDP, each PE router must be configured to participate in a given VPLS, and, in addition, be given the addresses of other PEs participating in the same VPLS. A full mesh of LDP sessions is then established between these PEs. LDP is then used to create an equivalent mesh of PWs between those PEs. An advantage to using PWs as the underlying technology for the data plane is that in the event of failure, traffic will automatically be routed along available backup paths in the service provider's network. Failover will be much faster than could be achieved with