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Cisco Frame Relay Configurations

Jonathan Chin dicussess basic Frame Relay operations on Cisco routers in a router-based Frame Relay network. He also explains how to configure a basic frame relay network involving Cisco equipment and how to perform basic monitoring and troubleshooting using relevant Cisco IOS show and debug commands.
This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

The topics and questions that this chapter addresses include the following:

  • Enabling Frame Relay encapsulation

  • Configuring LMI type on a Frame Relay interface

  • Configuring static and dynamic DLCI to network layer address mapping

  • Configuring Frame Relay subinterfaces

  • Configuring point-to-point subinterfaces

  • Configuring multipoint subinterfaces

  • Configuring a Cisco router as a Frame Relay switch

  • Configuring Frame Relay switching using a local significance approach to DLCI assignment

  • Configuring Frame Relay switching using a global significance approach to DLCI assignment

  • Verifying Frame Relay connections with Cisco IOS show commands

  • Troubleshooting Frame Relay connections with IOS debug commands

After completing this chapter, readers will be able to perform the basic Frame Relay configuration commands with the Cisco IOS software. Readers will be able to configure a basic Frame Relay network involving Cisco equipment and to perform basic monitoring and troubleshooting using relevant Cisco IOS show and debug commands.

Configuring Frame Relay

Frame Relay is configured on the Cisco router via the text-based Cisco IOS Command Line Interface (CLI). This section looks at the configuration commands required to configure basic Frame Relay operation on a Cisco router.

A basic setup involving the hardware configurations depicted in Figure 4-1 is used for this discussion and for illustration purposes. In the later part of this chapter, additional hardware will be required to explain more complex configuration tasks. In the setup used in this chapter, the Cisco routers are configured as Frame Relay access devices, or data terminal equipment (DTE), connected directly to a dedicated Frame Relay switch, or data circuit-terminating equipment (DCE). Note that Cisco routers can be configured to operate similarly as a Frame Relay switch as well. The configuration tasks will be fully explained in a later section.

Figure 1Figure 4-1 Frame Relay Hardware Configuration

NOTE

Different Cisco IOS software versions or releases may display slightly different outputs. To maintain consistency of the Cisco IOS Software Version, IOS 12.2(1) release is loaded on all routers used in the configuration examples of this chapter.

Example 4-1 displays the show output of the show version command on R1.

Example 4-1 IOS Version Loaded on the Lab Routers

R1#show version 
Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software 
IOS (tm) 7200 Software (C7200-JS-M), Version 12.2(1), RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc2)
Copyright (c) 1986-2001 by cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Thu 26-Apr-01 22:10 by cmong
Image text-base: 0x60008960, data-base: 0x616B0000

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