Get Your Free Bandwidth Here! Free Bits!

Get Your Free Bandwidth Here! Free Bits!

So, you can save a little (or a lot) of money based on how much hardware you need to buy when using Frame Relay. Now imagine that Fred, the president of Fredsco, has a network with two sites and a single WAN link with a speed of 128 Kbps. The Frame Relay company's salesman gets a bonus if he signs up a new customer today, so he stops by to see Fred. "You know, we can install Frame Relay instead of your 128 Kbps point-to-point WAN link. For the same price, we can guarantee that you can send at least 128 Kbps between those two sites using Frame Relay. But most of the time, you'll be able to send double that256 Kbpsfor no extra cash! And after you sign, I'll buy lunch."

Although the salesman's promise sounds suspicious, Frame Relay really would provide equal or higher speeds at the same price, just as he claims. Frame Relay protocols actually define the technical details behind the salesman's claims. To see how that works, look at Figure 15-7, which shows three routers using Frame Relay.