Cisco Frame Relay Solutions Guide

Rating:
Summary: Acurate, Appropriate , and Applicable
Review: The title is accurate because the Jonathan Chin begins each chapter with certain problems that are encountered with Frame Relay. Then he spends that chapter demonstrating how Cisco has addressed these obstacles with new features in their Internetwork Operating System (IOS). Chin deals with the problems of multi-access Frame Relay, but dedicates more time to hub-and-spoke networks, since this is the most common type seen in the industry. There are so many options for shaping and managing traffic across the Frame Relay links with the newer versions of the Cisco IOS. And Chin explains them all showing how they solve existing limitations and what new limitations they bring, if any. When a new feature is presented, he usually charts out the advantages and disadvantages of the new versus the old configurations.
The reader should have some basic knowledge of wide area networking to find the information in the Cisco Frame Relay Solutions Guide useful. The service provider offering complete end-to-end solutions for customers will get the most from the book. However, network administrators throughout the industry will find it useful for managing their leased Frame Relay network. There are some examples of what can be done on only the end DTE routers, without the help of the service provider.
The chapters have excellent references with review questions. Nine of the chapters include case studies where real life problems are problems are described and solutions are shown with configurations. The author obviously has an excellent lab where the solutions were tested and documented. Chin also presents solutions that would be helpful in countries where the infrastructure is out-dated. One nice trick is multi-plexing multiple DLCIs to increase bandwidth where a full T1 is not possible. I give this book a five star rating for layout, accuracy, and usefulness.