This document describes a mechanism that helps to minimize the negative effects on MPLS traffic caused by Label Switching Router's (LSR's) control plane restart@ specifically by the restart of its Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) component@ on LSRs that are capable of preserving the MPLS forwarding component across the restart. The mechanism described in this document is applicable to all LSRs@ both those with the ability to preserve forwarding state during LDP restart and those without (although the latter needs to implement only a subset of the mechanism described in this document). Supporting (a subset of) the mechanism described here by the LSRs that can not preserve their MPLS forwarding state across the restart would not reduce the negative impact on MPLS traffic caused by their control plane restart@ but it would minimize the impact if their neighbor(s) are capable of preserving the forwarding state across the restart of their control plane and implement the mechanism described here. The mechanism makes minimalistic assumptions on what has to be preserved across restart - the mechanism assumes that only the actual MPLS forwarding state has to be preserved; the mechanism does not require any of the LDP-related states to be preserved across the restart. The procedures described in this document apply to downstream unsolicited label distribution. Extending these procedures to downstream on demand label distribution is for further study.