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This document provides information about designing networks that transport SNA protocols over Frame Relay using an IP backbone.
Often, discussions about SNA over Frame Relay lead to SNA-only solutions such as IBM's Boundary Network Node (BNN) or Boundary Access Node (BAN). The relative simplicity of BNN and BAN solutions are attractive to some customers. These customers have migrated toward BNN and BAN to transport SNA. However, the vast majority of Cisco customers use DLSw+ to not only transport SNA, but integrate SNA into an IP backbone that uses Frame Relay.
Frame Relay is a Layer 2 technology. IP is a Layer 3 technology. TCP encompasses Layers 4 through 6 technologies. SNA is the application data. In the case of SNA over Frame Relay, the application data (SNA) is a suite of protocols that have their own architecture encompassing Layers 2 through 7. Cisco has proven that these two diverse protocol suites can peacefully converge over a common enterprise network using leased lines to access remote sites. Frame Relay services to remote locations are decreasing in price and increasingly ubiquitous. These factors are driving decision-makers to replace existing wide-area leased-line infrastructures with equivalent Frame Relay services. However, the lower cost of Frame Relay comes at a price of increased complexity that must be addressed to maintain existing user service levels. To specifically address DLSw+ over Frame Relay, this guide was written.
This guide does not include topics presented in other related design guides, although there is some minor overlap. Non-SNA topics on Frame Relay are presented in Frame Relay Design Guide. DLSw+ topics are presented in DLSw+ Design and Implementation Guide. APPN topics are presented in APPN Design and Implementation Guide.
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This document is for anyone who wants to learn more about Cisco's SNA internetworking over Frame Relay solutions. A technology overview, including a brief historical perspective, is included to provide background information and a sound technical understanding of SNA and Frame Relay. Special emphasis is placed on issues related to maintaining SNA response times, especially the causes that degrade SNA response times and the techniques to improve them. Also included is a section on the performance characteristics of the various encapsulation methodologies for Frame Relay (performance testing for BNN and BAN has not been done as of this writing). Although DLSw+ is a major part of this design guide, some features (for example, backup and redundancy) are not discussed, because they are covered in detail in DLSw+ Design and Implementation Guide.
Examples of key configuration commands are shown to aid in understanding a particular configuration. However, this document does not contain the exact and complete configurations. This information is available and regularly updated in Cisco Connection Online (CCO) and in the Cisco product documentation. CCO is Cisco's primary, real-time support system and is accessible at the World Wide Web address http://www.cisco.com.
This document contains the following chapters and appendixes:
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