Frame Relay Hardware requirment

[King Wang Anderson Mok]

I would like to configure a simple frame relay topology for my practical.

however, i do not know what kind of hardware i need for this.

at this moment, i have a cisco 2500 series and 2600 router and plenty of db60 cable.

So what is missing to build a FR toplogy to support p2p, p2mp, etc...

[Collin Clark]

You will need some serial interfaces and another router to act as the frame-relay switch.

Here's a couple of links-

http://www.internetworkexpert.com/resources/compound.frame-relay.htm

http://www.networkliquidators.com/article-cisco-certification-building-your-own-lab-part-ii.asp

Hope that helps and good luck.

[King Wang Anderson Mok]

Thank you, however, if i use the router as a frame-relay switch, how can i use the point-to-multi point function in FR.

[Collin Clark]

Check the first link, it shows a full mesh of PVCs. The rest of the multipoint config is on your CPE routers.

[Richard Burts]

To build your own test environment to run Frame Relay requires at least 3 routers and more might be beneficial. You need 1 router to be the Frame Relay switch and at least 2 routers to run Frame Relay end to end.

If you have only 3 routers you can get multipoint (sort of) by configuring 1 router as the Frame Relay switch, 1 router as the multipoint hub, and 1 router as a multipoint spoke. But to really experiment with Frame Relay multipoint you should have 4 or more routers. With 4 routers you would have 1 hub and 2 spokes and multipoint would work and if you have 5 routers you could see the implications of multipoint even better.

HTH

Rick