FRAME RELAY AND ATM INTERWORKING

Frame relay has proven to be a very successful wide area networking se rvice, and ATM is gaining momentum in the industry to become the prefe rred common backbone technology for supporting a wide variety of netwo rk services, including native ATM cell relay service and frame relay s ervice. In the years ahead, ATM is poised to become the dominant netwo rking technology. Since frame relay and cell relay services will coexi st for a long time to come, it is imperative that the network and serv ice interworking specifications be defined and implemented. This artic le focuses on the topic of frame relay and ATM cell relay service and network interworking. The authors provide the rationale, the tandards- based methodology, the major open issues, and a likely evolution scena rio for the interworking of frame relay and ATM cell relay networks an d services.