You are designing an MPLS network and want to ensure that traffic traverses an LSP...

In a Juniper Networks MPLS environment, the selection of a signaling protocol depends heavily on the requirement for traffic engineering and path control. To satisfy the requirement for anexplicit path—where the network architect defines specific hop-by-hop routers that the traffic must traverse—theResource Reservation Protocol (RSVP)is the necessary choice.

According to Juniper documentation, RSVP (specifically RSVP-TE) supports the use ofExplicit Route Objects (EROs). When you configure an LSP in Junos OS, you can define a path consisting of a series of IP addresses (strict or loose hops). RSVP then signals the LSP along that exact sequence of routers, reserving resources and establishing labels as it goes. This allows for precise control over the network's traffic patterns, enabling administrators to steer traffic away from congested links or toward specific high-bandwidth paths.

In contrast,LDP (Label Distribution Protocol)(Option D) is a "best-effort" signaling protocol. LDP strictly follows the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) shortest path. It does not support explicit paths or traffic engineering constraints; it simply builds a "mesh" of labels based on the existing routing table.IS-IS(Option C) is an IGP used to populate the routing table and TED but does not signal labels.BGP(Option A) is used for service delivery (like L3VPNs) but relies on an underlying transport LSP (built by RSVP or LDP) to reach its next hop. Therefore, only RSVP provides the mechanism for explicit path manipulation.