SCION feels like---and from the FAQ its developers agree---MPLS applied to the inter-system problem. Many of the advantages it has, such as very high performanc

SCION feels like---and from the FAQ its developers agree---MPLS applied to the inter-system problem. Many of the advantages it has, such as very high performance routing at intermediary nodes, are more or less inherited from the MPLS design. What it adds on top of MPLS is a route discovery/setup mechanism that is far more suited to border gateway use, with security and integrity precautions. Additionally, SCION comes with COLIBRI, a reservation-based QoS system that at least on brief reading seems to have much of the power of RSVP with MPLS to provide dedicated bandwidth for media applications. It will of course face the challenges of operating between domains without complete mutual trust, which is what has generally killed resource reservation on the internet (I mean, besides software engineers always thinking resource reservation is too hard). MPLS is, in my opinion, and under-rated protocol, and it's cool to see the label switching concept being developed into the future.