Northern Telecom Ltd, DEC, StrataCom Inc and Cisco Systems Inc have come together to agree a common specification for frame relay connections to link customer equipment such as local area network bridges and routers to networking equipment such as telephone exchanges, fast packet networking systems and packet switches. They claim it to be the first agreement between private and public network suppliers on a common implementation of the frame relay interface standard. Frame relay is a high performance data communications service for corporate data networks, particularly local area network interconnect applications and supports communications at up to 2.048Mbps, bandwidth on demand, and multiple data sessions over a single access line. It is intended to reduce delays, offer more efficient use of bandwidth and reduce communications equipment costs. The agree ment means that network managers will be able to buy networking equipment and services from the four companies, and any others that imp lement this specification. In part icular, users of DEC’s routers and Cisco’s multiprotocol router-bridges will be able to connect their equip ment to StrataCom IPX private net works or to the public network via Northern Telecom’s SuperNode tele phone exchanges. The joint specifi cation enhances the basic ANSI and CCITT recommended standards by add ing support for Open Systems Inter connection Layer 1 physical connect ions, customer network management functions and service enhancements such as data packet broadcasting. The four invite vendors with frame relay products or with plans to implement frame relay to join in the effort to solidify the standard.
