What is the primary benefit of deployment MPLS over the WAN as opposed to extending VRF-lite across the WAN?

MPLS convergence is not inherently faster than a well-tuned VRF-lite deployment using IP routing protocols with aggressive timers.

With MPLS WAN, the service provider manages the underlying infrastructure, label switching, and routing, eliminating the need for customer engineers to operate and maintain complex WAN routing. This shifts capital and operational expense to a predictable service fee, resulting in lower OpEx compared to VRF-lite where the customer owns and operates all WAN PE/CE routers and routing protocols.

MPLS does not guarantee lower latency than VRF-lite; latency is determined by physical path and provider SLA, not the labeling mechanism itself.

Both MPLS and VRF-lite can support dynamic fault-tolerance through routing protocols; neither has a structural advantage over the other in this regard.