Frame Relay is a packet switched connection orientated network. It is in the physical and data link layer of the OSI model. It is a virtual connection between devises, it can transmit data, video and voice this is done via frames and it supports a bandwidth of up to 1.5M and up.
What does packet switched connection oriented mean? This means that there has to be a connection made between two devises before any data can be sent or recieved. Why it came about: When it first emerged it was a less complicated version of the X.25 protocol. Cisco helped to standardise it. It was to be used as a transport method via Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) interfaces. It then became a standalone technology, apart from ISDN as ISDN was too slow .
Why so popular: Frame Relay is extremely popular as:
- To configure a router to the ways of frame relay is fairly easy to do
- Uses less equiptment
- Not complicated to use
- It has a high bandwidth
- Is quite reliable and most importantly
- It doesn’t cost that much.
Classification
Frame Relay is classified under the same class as ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode). It is used for telecommunications networks and transfers data voice and video. It is a widely used WAN protocol. It is used between Local Area Networks (LAN) over the Wide Area Network (WAN). All users get a personal line to a Frame Relay node. These nodes are enabled, to point frames in the right direction with the smallest amount of processing required. The link layer has a large address field in frame relay. The network deals with the transmission of these data files over a path which changes quite often. This path is invisible to to the users.
Error handling: Frame relay does not try to fix any errors that may be trying to be transmitted; it lets the.
