AT&T® Frame Relay Service
Need a cost-effective alternative to private lines for LAN interconnection? AT&T® Frame Relay Service is the answer. With bandwidths from 56 kilobits per second (Kbps) to 1.544 megabits per second (Mbps), Frame Relay lets you connect many users at multiple sites with just one line per site.
Today, your business might employ a variety of communication schemes—for example, an X.25-based packet network, an SNA multipoint network, and IPX LAN networks. These require multiple network access points and lots of staff attention. You can save money and administrative headaches by replacing them all with Frame Relay Service. Frame Relay Service is ideal for intermittent data, such as traffic between LANs or host data transfers. Frame Relay is also a practical replacement for under-used private lines. It can serve all of your locations, each with a single line—regardless of the number of users at each site. Frame Relay lets you connect your sites more efficiently and at a lower cost than that of a private line network.
When you subscribe to Frame Relay Service at 56/64 Kbps or 1.544 Mbps, AT&T can show you how to squeeze even more capacity from the lines by improving the way you manage your traffic. AT&T also provides an optional Forward and Backward Explicit Congestion Notification to alert you to traffic delays and other network problems.
AT&T® Customer Network Management (CNM) Service enables Frame Relay customers to manage their networks by allowing them to monitor the Logical Termination Points on the subscriber network interfaces. AT&T uses the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) as the standard network management protocol for CNM.
You get...
Savings—Frame Relay Service lets you define multiple connections among your users on a single access line, saving you the cost of lines, network administration, and maintenance.
Performance Enhancements—Frame Relay Service allows users to interconnect all locations cost-effectively through a meshed network.
Flexible Bandwidth—Frame Relay lets traffic burst higher than the subscribed rate, providing additional bandwidth on demand.
Security—Frame Relay Service's permanent virtual circuit (PVC) scheme offers the highest security, since your data travels only between the endpoints that you identify.
Low-Risk Investment—Frame Relay Service is based on international standards, letting you re-use your existing network termination equipment. You can minimize risk even more by leasing equipment from AT&T.
Reliability—AT&T monitors your Frame Relay network 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, ensuring that your service runs smoothly.
It's good for...
LAN interconnection
Electronic mail
Accessing financial market statistics
Centralized payroll for distributed offices
Automated inventory for retail outlets
Sales data collection from branch offices
Remote office connectivity
Consolidation of SNA and LAN traffic
How It Works
In AT&T's Network
AT&T's network carries your data as a series of variable-length frames, similar to today's packet data transmission. But while packet data networks fix errors as they move across the network, Frame Relay removes bad frames before they are switched along—this minimizes delays.
Frame Relay connects your sites using an arrangement called a permanent virtual circuit (PVC). You define each PVC—a logical path across AT&T's network when your service is set up. You can assign multiple PVCs to a single access line, letting different users and applications share the line most efficiently.
At Your Premises
Each of your sites connect to Frame Relay using a dedicated digital AT&T access line. Each line must terminate at a standard Frame Relay assembler/dissembler (FRAD) or a Frame Relay-equipped router. Either must be coupled with a CSU/DSU.