Partial Mesh and Full Mesh Frame Relay Designs
Frame Relay networks provide several virtual circuits that form the basis for connections between stations (routers) that are attached to it. The resulting set of interconnected devices form a private Frame Relay group. These groups can be either fully interconnected with a complete mesh of virtual circuits, or only partially interconnected. In either case, each virtual circuit is uniquely identified at each Frame Relay interface by a DLCI.
From an architectural point of view, a Frame Relay topology supports both partial-mesh and full-mesh structures. Because of the permanent nature of the connections, partial-mesh structures contain physical connections to some sites but not to all, thus creating an any-to-some structure. It becomes obvious that a fully meshed structure requires more resources because an any-to-any connection requires n number of sites to be connected to each other. This number can be calculated by using the following formula:
Number of physical connections = n x (n - 1) / 2, where n is the number of connected routers.
NOTE These topologies might exist not only on the service provider side, but in enterprises that use Frame Relay as a private network solution.
Regardless of the Frame Relay network topology, from an enterprise standpoint, two main configurable connections exist to the Frame Relay network: point-to-point and point-to-multipont configurations, which are addressed in detail in Chapter 16.
Continue reading here: Frame Relay and Upper Layer Protocols
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