Customer Reviews

Frame Relay: Principles and Applications (Data Communications and Networks)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book will give you a good understanding of why and how Frame Relay appeared, where are its strong and weak points and how does it work inside, as well as sound criteria for implementation. However, since 1993 many things have happened, and the book needs to be updated. Frame is compared to X.25, which is almost extinct, and very little is said about Frame vs. ATM, which is now a mature technology. A more recent version would have deserved 5 stars.

A little, dinky, expensive hardcover which is pure, low-level data on the topic. Good to have if you need it. Better to complement it with a high-level book which explains the technology in a more mentally digestable format.

The book is in two parts and each addresses Frame-Relay in a different way. The first part is a largely non-technical introduction to the subject. If you want to know what Frame-Relay is, why it is the way that it is, what it is meant to be used for and how it might fit into a networking system, then you will get all of that here.

The second part is a technical description of the protocol. It goes into enough detail to allow you not just to understand the protocol but, if you have the coding and design skills, to write your own F-R stack and get it interworking with other networks.

I did that using this book as my reference. In the course of that work, I spotted one small error in the book. One bit in the Frame-Relay header field is mis-described but apart from that, it was a great help.

Not only is the technical content spot on but it is well presented. The layout and diagrams make sense and the English is clear and readable.

This is the only book I was able to find that had a section on LMI that was over 2 pages in length. ( The section on LMI in this book is 16 pages long ). I have not used this book for any purpose other than studying LMI.