Service interworking cost savings

As enterprise frame relay networks continue to expand - both in the bandwidth being consumed and the number of locations on the network - many network managers are utilizing frame relay/ATM interworking to address their growth requirements. There are two types of interworking: network and service. Although service interworking has the most impact on end users utilizing a provider's public data network, both are discussed below to fully explain the interworking concept.

With network interworking, the protocol employed in and out of each of your locations remains frame relay. In this scenario, your provider deploys ATM in the core of its backbone network with frame relay at the edge, most often for aggregation purposes (resulting in a more cost-efficient delivery solution). The conversion to and from ATM is transparent to the end user. Each of your locations delivers frames to the provider's network, which then cellifies the frames for transport across its ATM infrastructure. At the distant end of the ATM network, the frames are reconstructed for delivery via frame relay.

Service interworking, on the other hand, lets you choose the best technology (frame relay or ATM) for each of your locations. In other words, service interworking allows a frame relay site to communicate with an ATM site. The point of this type of interworking is to accomplish this communication without any special protocol conversion equipment; the network is responsible for interworking the protocols.

The major benefit of service interworking is overall reduced cost of network ownership. You don't have to implement a completely homogeneous network solution, and you can migrate specific locations to ATM when the application or bandwidth requirements exist. This migration on a location-by-location basis can occur without affecting premises equipment throughout the network.

TeleChoice is one of the leading telecommunications consultancies worldwide for the design, development, implementation, and migration of new and leading edge telecommunications hardware, software and services. Our focus is on public networking and value-added services for the telecommunications industry. You can contact TeleChoice at its corporate headquarters at (973) 239-0700 or visit our Web site for more information.

AT&T announces cause of frame relay outage
A glitch during an attempt to upgrade the software on one StrataCom switch caused a cascading flood of error messages that knocked out the whole network. Network World Fusion, 4/22/98.

Battle for ground supremacy
Frame relay vs. ATM, Network World, 12/29/97.

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