GL Communications Inc., a supplier of test, monitoring and analysis equipment for TDM, Wireless, IP and VoIP networks, has released Multi-Link Frame Relay Emulator, a client-server based software application for T1 E1 hardware platforms.

 

“Multi-Link Frame Relay, or MFR, is similar to Multi-Link PPP, and both are a form of inverse multiplexing. Users rely on inverse multiplexing when access line capacity does not scale smoothly,” said Karthik Ramalingam, project manager at GL, in a statement.  For example, sometimes access line capacity programs don’t notice the big jumps in bandwidth from 56 kbps, 1.544 Mbps, and 45 Mbps. In such cases, intermediate bandwidth must be derived by aggregating a number of smaller access lines into larger ones, Ramalingam said.

 

Ramalingam said that MFR is used to derive a larger frame relay pipe by aggregating smaller frame relay pipes. For example, five T1 frame relay pipes could be bundled to appear as a single 7.5 Mbps frame relay pipe.

 

Some of the advantages of using MFR are: better bandwidth sizing according to customer traffic requirements and potentially better QOS by minimizing delay, he pointed out.

 

He added that MFR works by bundling multiple T1 circuits into a multilink bundle and fragmenting the individual frame relay frames into fragments. These fragments are then transported in parallel over the multiple T1 circuits. At the other end, the fragments are reassembled into the original frame relay frames.

 

The protocol includes the use of sequence numbers to allow the fragments to be reassembled correctly and to ensure that the reconstructed frames are sent out in the original order in which they entered the network.

 

Ramalingam said that “Frame Relay” and “Multi-link Frame Relay” can be emulated and analyzed using GL’s client-server based MFR Emulation and FR Analysis software modules. MFR is an optional application for GL’s Card and USB based T1 E1 platforms.