What is the difference between frame relay and token ring?

Question

What is the difference between frame relay and token ring?

Answer 1

frame relay

A high-speed packet switching protocol used in wide area networks (WANs). Providing a granular service of up to DS3 speed (45 Mbps), it has become popular for LAN to LAN connections across remote distances, and services are offered by most major carriers.

Frame relay (FR) is much faster than X.25, the first packet-switched WAN standard, because frame relay was designed for reliable circuits and performs less error detection (X.25 was never widely used in the U.S.). Frame relay does not process the packets; it relays them from the switch's input port to the output port, hence the name.

The FRAD (Frame Relay Access Device)

Attachment to a frame relay network is made via a FRAD on the customer's premises, which may be a separate device or software in the router. The FRAD connects to a switch port on the service provider's network via the User-to-Network Interface (UNI). All traffic for one customer generally travels over the same line, which is typically a multiple of 64 Kbps. Frame relay switches interconnect via point-to-point lines or an ATM backbone.

Permanent and Switched Circuits

Frame relay provides Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVCs) and Switched Virtual Circuits (SVCs). They are logical connections provisioned ahead of time (PVCs) or on demand (SVCs).

Connections are identified by a Data Link Connection Identifier (DLCI) number that is significant only to the local FR switch, which changes the number as it passes the packet on to its destination. The receiving switch uses a different DLCI for its end of the same connection. Every DLCI requires a Committed Information Rate (CIR), which is a pledge on the part of the network to provide a certain amount of transmission capacity for the connection. CIRs are adjusted with experience.

Voice Over FR

Voice can be packetized to travel over a frame relay network, often providing significant cost savings with some sacrifice in voice quality, depending on network configuration. In 1998, the Frame Relay Forum finalized the Voice Over FR specification. FRF.11 defines the formats, and FRF.12 subdivides large frames in order to interleave real time voice with data on slow connections.

AND

token ring network

A LAN access method that uses the token passing technology in a physical ring. Each station in the network passes the token on to the station next to it. Token Ring and FDDI LANs use the token ring access method. See Token Ring, FDDI and token passing.

All the best :)

Answer 2

Frame is a layer 2 WAN routing protocol.

Token ring is a LAN technology similar to Ethernet but instead of using CDMA it passes a token around a ring to allow only a single node to "talk" at a time on the wire.

Answer 3

Well for one, frame relay is a WAN technology and token-ring is a LAN protocol.

Answer 4

think of a token ring as direction of travel and think of frame relay as speed of travel to different things