What is the max sixe a frame relay link can be?

[Aenygma]

Just like the topic asks.. a simple question.. which hopefully can be splained to me simply... some say just up to T1, yet a whitepaper on it said 45MEGs... anyone???


Tanx

 

[pm]

I thought that frame-relay peaked at 1.54Mb/s. Could the paper be referring to layering frame-relay on an OC-48 or OC-192 link?

 

[L3Guy]

wyst;

When Frame Relay was originally defined, the maximum speed was T-1 or 1.54 Mbps.
This has been amended to now support DS-3 (45Mbps) as well.
While it is now part of the standard, it isn't clear to me that any carrier offers
a FR DS-3 as a service offering.

Another way to have higher bandwidth FR connections is to use the Frame Relay Forum 8 ( FRF8 )specification, that translates RFC1490 FR to RFC 1483 PVC's. Or in English, translates the FR dlci's to ATM PVC's. ( That was English? ) At this point, OC-3 (155 Mbps} and above speeds are possible.

HTH

Doug

BTW, there are several professionals that hang in the network forum. You may have more luck with networking questions there.

 

[spidey07]

yeah...what L3guy said.

T3, OC3, IMA of 8xT1.5s. Depends on if the provider will support it though. ATT, MCI do support DS3 frame-relay ports. When a carrier offers you a DS3 port they are in turn using FRF8 to map the DLCIs to ATM pvcs.

 

[L3Guy]

<< yeah...what L3guy said. >>



yeah...what spidey07 said.

Spidy correctly points out that FRF8 is available from T-1 all the way to OC-48 and beyond, including IMA from 2 to 8 T-1's and DS-3.




<< . Depends on if the provider will support it though >>



Spot on. Couldn't have said it better.

Doug

 

[CTho9305]

whats a DS-3 (45mbps is slower than an OC-3, so would an oc3 use a bigger frame relay link? and what's a frame relay link?

 

[CTho9305]

whats a DS-3 (45mbps is slower than an OC-3, so would an oc3 use a bigger frame relay link? and what's a frame relay link?

 

[L3Guy]

<< whats a DS-3 >>



A DS-3, sometimes called T-3 by the vulgar , is a 28 T-1 plus &quot;extra&quot; signaling circuit.

]

<< 45mbps is slower than an OC-3, so would an oc3 use a bigger frame relay link? >>



An OC-3 can carry 3 DS-3 circuits.

AS previously noted, Frame Relay is defined between 56k DDS and DS-3 (45 Mbps). OC-3 (155 Mbps) can't be directly used. If OC-3 bandwidth is required, the provider translates the frame relay to ATM using the FRF8 standard and delivers an ATM circuit to the customer.



<< and what's a frame relay link? >>



Frame Relay is a WAN system that allows Multiple sites to communicate without requiring multiple circuits per site. The sites are differentiated by Permanent Virtual Circuits, or PVC's.
Each PVC has a local identifier, called a DLCI. A DLCI is a number between 0 and 1023 (0-15 are reserved, however). Think of it as a VLAN tag, if that makes sense.

Frame relay was priced attractively because the provider &quot;shared&quot; bandwidth inside his frame relay network. This sharing cost the provider less than dedicated bandwidth, and the savings were passed on to the users.

Hope this helps;

Doug