Frame Relay

Frame Relay is a consistent Wide Area Networking technology which by using the packet switching method can identify the logical and physical link layers of digital telecommunication channels. To cut the long story short Frame Relay is a protocol standard which provides a speedy and efficient method of transmitting data from a user to routers and LAN bridges.

Frame Relay was basically made to carry information on an Integrated Service Digital Network, more commonly known as ISDN, but it can also work efficiently on other similar network interfaces.  Frame Relay is mostly used by network providers for voice and data as a computer networking technique in which modular communication protocols are designed in which logically separate functions in a network are abstracted from the underlying structures through information hiding within higher level objects. This method in technical terminology is known as Encapsulation.

It is used between LAN networks over a single WAN network. The user at each separate end gets his own private or leased line to a frame node. Frame Relay network copes with the transmission over a repeatedly changing path which is transparent to all the end users. In a network the frame Relay is transmitted to its end by way of virtual circuits which are the logical paths from a starting point in the network.

As the technology has advanced and with the arrival of MPLS and VPN and other devices such as cable modems and DSL, which are quite efficient in providing broadband services, the Frame Relay protocol is seeing its end but in many of the rural areas where technology has not reached yet and which do not have the services of cable modems or DSL then for such places Frame Relay is still an active service because of its inexpensiveness and simplicity.