Briefly describe the various Frame Relay topologies.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Frame relay can use many different WAN topologies: peer (point-to-point), star (hub and spoke), partial mesh, or full mesh physical topology.

The peer topology is like the bus LAN topology; nodes are simply strung along in a daisychained fashion. Very often, only two routers will be connected. This is the simplest WAN topology, and is the least expensive and easiest to configure. The disadvantage to the peer WAN topology is that a failure between nodes will affect the WAN; there is no redundancy. The star is the most popular Frame Relay topology. One router functions as a central point, or hub, in a simple hierarchical configuration. All other devices are connected to the central router as spokes would connect to a hub. Typically the network administrator will configure the central router with a single interface that makes a multipoint connection to all other routers.

The full mesh is the most expensive topology to implement because each router has a direct connection to every other router. While this offers the most redundancy, it is extremely expensive to implement.

The partial mesh allows redundancy for critical connections while being less expensive than the full mesh. Essentially, any Frame Relay topology that is not a star or a full mesh is a partial mesh.