* Multilink services show signs of resuscitation
A major domestic service provider is reportedly offering a managed multilink frame relay service: Sprint.
MFR aggregates the bandwidth of multiple physical-layer links – such as T-1/E-1 lines – while presenting a single high-speed frame relay user-to-network interface (UNI). Specified in the former Frame Relay Forum’s FRF.16 implementation agreement, this “Layer 2 inverse multiplexing” gives you a single, logical frame relay interface that supports more bandwidth than is available from any single physical interface.
MFR also provides redundancy: if a single physical circuit should fail, the traffic traversing it uses the remaining aggregate bandwidth.
Sprint is reportedly using MFR, in effect, to offer high-speed (3M- to 12M-bit/sec) managed frame relay services. We learned of the service from equipment supplier Quick Eagle Networks. At press time, Sprint had yet to comment on the service, which Quick Eagle says the carrier commercially launched in January.
Alan Rice, Quick Eagle’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, says Sprint supplies the Quick Eagle 5850 frame relay access device (FRAD) to customers. You connect the FRAD to the High-Speed Serial Interface (HSSI) or RS449/EIA-530A/V.35 interface on your WAN access router; the FRAD speaks FRF.16 to the service provider’s network equipment.
The FRAD-plus-router configuration might not be as convenient as bundling MFR capabilities right into your router. However, other products – such as Quick Eagle’s 5800 series of routers – are also FRF.16-compliant, so offering a router-based service is technically possible. And routing capabilities can be remotely turned on in the 5850 using a configurable, software-based feature key.
We have been fans of MFR ever since the adoption of FRF.16 in 1999 (officially amended as FRF.16.1 in 2002). With MFR, frame relay customers can increase their speeds incrementally, rather than having to jump from T-1/E-1 to T-3/E-3 speeds if traffic loads don’t warrant it or being out of luck if T-3/E-3 service aren’t available.
If you are a frame relay customer simply seeking faster speeds, MFR – where you can get it – maintains your current topology with better management, reliability and bandwidth utilization than you can get with other services today.
