If an LSR is configured for load balancing and an EL is found in the label stack, the LSR takes the EL into account in the hashing algorithm as follows:
label-only: only use the EL as input to the hash routine. The rest of the label stack is ignored.
label-ip: only use the EL and the IP packet as input to the hash routine. The rest of the label stack is ignored.
An EL and its associated ELI are not exposed when a tunnel label is swapped at an LSR acting as an LSP stitching point. Therefore, the EL and ELI are forwarded as any other packet on the LSP.