Item Subject: Message text
We have been using Frame Relay for over a year now and
we are very happy with the performance, reliability, and
significant cost savings.  Our network serves 25 remote sites
scattered all ovar the country.
 
You really don't need to build a fully meshed network, and if
you don't, the only router we would recommend would be Cisco.
 
Our first starting point was to select the Frame Relay service
provider.  We looked at WilTel, CompuServe, MCI, Sprint, and
AT&T....finally selecting AT&T because of our volume agreements
more than any other reason.
 
Once that's done, your service provider will order all the circuits
for you, and deal with the local exchange carriers to get the lines
installed.  All you need to do is indicate your demarcation points,
and have the lines extended to your dsu/csu units, and then connect to
your routers.
 
The router programming is simple and straight forward.  We had all
of our site routers sent here to our home base first, and we pre-
programmed them before sending them on to the sites.  This helped our
site managers ... basically now a "plug it in and turn it on" operation.
 
The only real soft decision may be how you want the links configured.
We went with a standard of a 56kb tail circuit to each site, with a]
16kb CIR (committed information rate).  After watching the traffic
for a few months we then made adjustments to the CIR as needed.
 
At our two major switching sites, we are running Fractional T-1's
and 256kb CIR.
 
Hope this will help get you started.
 
Mike Lippold
Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co.