Frame

fFRAME RELAY

Frame Relay was standardised initially in 1990, leaving the remaining to be standardised in 1991 by both ANSI and the ITU-T [7].

What it is: 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.[9]
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 [1].

Why so popular: Frame Relay is extremely popular as:
  1. To configure a router to the ways of frame relay is fairly easy to do
  2. Uses less equiptment
  3. Not complicated to use
  4. It has a high bandwidth
  5. Is quite reliable and most importantly
  6. 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[4]. The network deals with the transmission of these data files over a path which changes quite often. This path is invisable 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...