January 24, 2000

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Frame Relay And ATM Integration Offers Options
By Terry Sweeney

he networking industry always has prided itself on offering several ways to get the job done. It's that sort of flexibility that prompted Communications Supply Corp. in Carol Stream, Ill., to sign a three-year, $1.5 million contract with Sprint for integrated access coupled with a hybrid network, saving the company about $500,000 over the term of the contract.

Like many other companies, Communications Supply is combining frame relay and asynchronous transfer mode over a single network. It's relying on Sprint's Integrated On-Demand Network, a multiprotocol access service, to reach Sprint's ATM backbone. The company can run any type of traffic, including voice, ATM cells, or frame relay data, over a single ION link and over the ATM backbone.

Communications Supply is starting by porting its voice traffic across the network and will follow up later this year with its frame-relay traffic. "We don't use frame and ATM together yet, but it's a transition we have planned to better manage our network," says Mason Rotelli, CIO of the company, which boasts a $30 million inventory of 25,000 items ranging from wiring, telecommunications, and networking hardware to industrial and specialty communications equipment at 30 locations.

Rotelli estimates that ATM can handle five to eight times more calls on a T1 line than a voice-grade, digital private line. "It will reduce by half the number of lines in our corporate facility and may even make a single T3 affordable," he says.

Remote sites require anywhere from 56-Kbps to 256-Kbps access, and regional offices may go even higher, above T1 speeds (1.544 Mbps). Services such as Sprint's ION give customers more flexibility to select the speed and the technology they want. "They can put in redundant [backup] services, or put in high-speed frame or ATM--or just replace a few sites with ATM," says Peggy Arnone, Sprint's group manager for advanced data services. Essentially, there's less bending the customer to fit the network and more bending the network to fit customer requirements.

Communications Supply is using a Cisco 3810 to access Sprint's ATM backbone, a device with DSU functions. With its next software upgrade, the 3810 will include some ATM-to-frame and routing capabilities as well, according to Communications Supply technical services manager Bob Fischer. "It's acting as a network-to-network interface between our network and theirs," he says. "Sprint has literally brought its interface onto our premises."

Return to main story, "Hybrid Networks Offer New Options."

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