Frame-relay Monitoring and Troubleshooting

Frame Relay is a high-performance WAN protocol that operates at the physical and data link layers of the OSI reference model. Frame Relay originally was designed for use across Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) interfaces. Today, it is used over a variety of other network interfaces as well. This article focuses on Frame Relay's specifications and applications in the context of WAN services.

 http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Frame_Relay

 Monitoring -- Frame Relay Troubleshooting Tasks

To troubleshoot and resolve Voice over Frame Relay configuration issues, perform the following tasks:

• If no calls are going through, ensure that the frame-relay voice bandwidth command is configured.
• If VoFR is configured on a PVC and there are problems with data connectivity on that PVC, ensure that the frame-relay fragment command has been configured.
• If data is not being transmitted but fragmentation is configured, ensure that Frame Relay traffic shaping is turned on.
• If the problem is with the dial plan or the dial peers, use the show dial-plan number command with the argument dial string to display which dial peers are being used when a specific number is called.
• If there are problems connecting an FRF.11 trunk call, ensure that the session protocol command in dial peer configuration is set to frf11-trunk.
• If FRF.11 trunk calls on the Cisco 2600 or Cisco 3600 series routers are being configured, verify that the called-number vofr command in dial peer configuration is configured and that its number matches the destination pattern of the corresponding POTS dial peer.
• Ensure that the voice port is set to no shutdown.
• Ensure that the serial port or the T1/E1 controller is set to no shutdown.
• Toggle the voice port by first entering shutdown and then no shutdown every time the connection trunk or no connection trunk command is entered.

Check the validity of the Voice over Frame Relay configuration by performing the following tasks:

• Enter the show frame-relay pvc command to show the status of the PVCs.
• Enter the show frame-relay vofr command with the arguments interface, dlci, cid to show statistics and information on the open subchannels.
• Enter the show frame-relay fragment command with the arguments interface number and dlci to show the Frame Relay fragmentation configuration.
• Enter the show traffic-shape queue command to display the traffic-shaping information if Frame Relay traffic shaping is configured. The queue option displays the queueing statistics. For more information about traffic shaping,