Fram Relay and MPLS work together?

[a.azab]

Hello all,

My understanding is as follows, so please correct me if I am wrong:

Frame relay is a layer 2 technology and protocol. It can be used to connect two sites (routers) via Frame Relay switches. When sending a packet from one site to another, all the forwarding within the ISP will be ONLY L2 Frame Relay switching until it reaches the destination router.

My questions:

1- can we us ONLY frame Relay to connect two sites that are in two different countries? Meaning that in this case we have ONLY two routers that are connected via frame relay switches all the way?

2- Is there any distance limitation for Frame Relay?

3- What cables are used to connect customers to the ISP? is it RJ-11, fiber or T1?

4- Does MPLS work over Frame Relay infrastructure? If yes, MPLS runs on routers and Frame Relay does not use routers (in the cloud). Can you please explain? (in case connecting two sites over frame relay)

Thanks

[Joseph W. Doherty]

#1 No.

#2 between FR switches?  Yes.  End-to-end?  Not that I recall, although there might be a max hop limit.  If the latter, likely something you would not bump into.

#3 Not that I'm aware of although I guess it's possible.  Conversely, though, frame-relay and/or ATM might run over MPLS.  The latter would emulate FR and/or ATM across a MPLS network.