RE: Links on the blink - reprise

["Jeffrey P. Oliveto" <joliveto () cwi net>]

Paul;

You state:

     At 05:47 PM 11/17/95 -0500, Sean Doran wrote:
  
> There are substantial disadvantages, too.
>
> In order to take advantage of the greater
> port-density(-per-dollar) on FR switches right now, the
> end user has to use FR, which is not always practical
> or desirable.  

One of the reasons why end users find frame-relay undesireable is
that they cannot be assured that their provider is not grossly
oversubscribed on PVC-per-port density. When you buy a T1 private
line, you can be assured that you're not sharing it with 120 other
end-users.  :-)

DS3/DS1 Backbone/Trunk capacity planning principles, whether across a Frame Relay Backbone or Cisco 7000 hdlc trunk 
network are still the same.  It's just as easy to over configure DS3/DS1 Cisco HDLC trunks as Frame Relay trunks.

Potentially at issue here is not Frame Relay networks as a transport but that a Cisco 7000 can not scale properly to 
support 120+ end-users. :-)

Modern Frame Relay switches:

1) have sub-msec latency
2) can support multiple trunks at DS3+ (to include ATM)
3) are not burdened with processing any of the IP layer 3 nor routing overhead
4) because of 3 have a cost per port that is 300 to 400% less than a Cisco 7000
5) can have it's backbone shared across multiple services thereby reducing both capitalization and bandwidth expense
6) allow ISP to pass the cost savings on to customers


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Jeff Oliveto                            |       Phone:  +1.703.760.1764 
Sr.Mgr Opns Technical Services  |       Fax:            +1.703.760.3321
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