AT&T Frame Relay Network

As the frame relay market leader, AT&T has the largest frame relay network and is able to use this size to help customers improve their network reliability. AT&T has over 620 domestic Points of Presence (POP) so local access circuit mileage is minimized. Once on the network you are protected by AT&T's self-healing restoration capabilities and frame relay switch rerouting capabilities. The great size of the AT&T network ensures there are many options for restoring even the most complex failures.

AT&T's engineering tools utilize the large scale of the AT&T network to provide built-in diversity to your network. These tools ensure that multiple ports, in the same geographic area, are installed on different port cards and, when possible, different carrier shelves. This diversity is augmented by hot standby port cards that activate within 30 seconds should a port failure occur in a carrier shelf. Finally, there are additional options for frame relay switch and POP diversity to further enhance reliability at your most critical locations. For site disaster recovery, AT&T frame relay offers two options based on your business needs: backup PVCs and AT&T Bandwidth Manager. The backup PVC feature allows you to redirect existing PVCs to a backup site. AT&T Bandwidth Manager avoids the need for PVC reconfiguration by redirecting your access circuit over the AT&T network to a backup access circuit at your disaster recovery site.

AT&T can implement IP-Enabled Frame Relay Service because of our deployment of advanced IP routing technology based on Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) within the existing AT&T Frame Relay Service infrastructure. MPLS uses the intelligence of IP routing technology to establish route assignments, but then uses the high performance of ATM to transport the IP packets. Because the MPLS technology is integrated into the AT&T Frame Relay architecture, it can be easily accessed through a PVC. For you, MPLS means that AT&T assumes responsibility for routing your data packets to their destination. By contrast, in a standard frame relay environment, your CPE is responsible for most routing decisions.