Zhone Technologies Network Device manual Frame Relay Access and Concentration Server

Zhone Technologies, Inc. IMACS Product Book, Version 4

Frame Relay Access and Concentration Server

This section highlights the capabilities of the IMACS Frame Relay server card as a cost-effective, efficient, and intelligent high-speed Frame Relay Assembly and Disassembly (FRAD) device and access concentrator in a Frame Relay network. This enables the service provider to deliver Frame Relay and Internet services with a high degree of quality in an economical fashion. The following is a list of the Zhone Technologies Frame Relay server card key benefits:

Highly efficient assembly, disassembly and concentration of Frame Relay traffic allows for significant Frame Relay switch port savings.

High Frame Relay port density offers significant hardware savings when compared to typical backbone switches making it suitable for deployment at the customer premises. Bringing the frame relay network features closer to the end-user and CO reduces backhaul charges due to efficient use of the frame relay backbone switch port.

100% compliance with industry Frame Relay standards enables ready interoperability in multi-vendor networks.

Support for existing UNI (User to Network Interface) and NNI (Network to Network Interface) standards implies that the frame relay server easily integrates into existing, standards-compliant frame relay infrastructure of the service provider.

-Manageability via SNMP and TELNET eliminates need for separate network management package and offers comprehensive diagnostics for both physical and logical network.

-Complete Support for physical layer diagnostics. In addition, it provides network access for a wide range of devices ranging from high-speed data interfaces (HSU), DDS interfaces (OCU-DP, DS0-DP), IDSL interfaces (BRI), and sub-rate data (FRAD).

-Comprehensive, standards-based congestion management techniques.

Standards based congestion management ensure interoperability with existing infrastructure and enables the service provider to offer better, more cost-effective Frame Relay services to its subscribers.

The Frame Relay Server can be deployed in the following application scenarios to provide a very cost-efficient and high-quality Frame Relay access to the end-users:

•Frame relay switch port savings

•Frame relay and Internet service provisioning

•IDSL service provisioning

•Grooming and concentration in cellular networks

•Central Office FRAD

•Frame relay concentration at hub sites

Frame Relay Switch Port Savings

Figure 32 shows an IMACS equipped with one or more Frame Relay server cards that is utilized at the service provider’s Central Office to efficiently concentrate multiple lower speed Frame Relay circuits into a consolidated Frame Relay stream into the backbone Frame Relay switch. This results in significant savings in port occupancy on the Frame Relay switch. It is amplified by the fact that these channelized ports on the backbone switches are much more expensive than their unchannnelized counterparts.

The presence of 68 highly-integrated channelized Frame Relay ports combined with the statistical multiplexing advantages of Frame Relay facilitate the savings by reducing the backbone switch port occupancy by over 2.5 times (67 DS0 circuits instead of 24 DS0 circuits on a single channelized T1 trunk). In a typical case this reduces circuit cost per DS0 by 20%.

March 2001 Page 82