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From: forster@cisco.com (Jim Forster)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.sys.cisco
Subject: Re: Frame Relay?
Message-ID: <35723@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 6 Jun 91 07:34:10 GMT
Sender: news@boulder.Colorado.EDU
Lines: 24


>> This all depends heavily on how much frame relay costs.  So this benefit,
>> plus the use of a single outbound interface to interconnect multiple routers
>> (as suggested by Beach) are the major pluses.

Greg, Linda, and others,

Frame Relay has a lot of benefits, especially for non-IP/CLNP public
networks, but we not should overstate them.  In particular, if you take a
given FR net design, and transform it into a router design, simply by
replacing all the FR switches with routers, you will end up with a Router
net that has all of the same bandwidth/delay properties as the FR net.

The advantages that I seen in FR are that it allows completely flexible
addresses, because it does level-2 switching.  Therefore the backbone
equipement can support lots of organizations each of which has the same
DECNet Area 1, or Novell IPX Net 1, etc.  Each such organization won't be
able to communicate with the other organizations due to the addressing
problems, but thats usually also consistent with security goals.
Protocols with universal address administration, such as TCP/IP & CLNP,
don't have this problem.


  -- Jim