Our Free Study Guides and Practice Exams Will Make You Certifiable!
 Home

HOME | EXAM DETAILS | FREE TESTS | STUDY GUIDES | GLOSSARY | ARTICLES | BOOKS & TRAINING | FORUMS | CAREER & JOBS
 MICROSOFT
 COMPTIA
 CISCO
 CIW
 LPI
 RED HAT
 IBM
 FREE MAGAZINES
 WHITE PAPERS
 TOPSITES
 CONTRIBUTORS
 SITE MAP
 SITE FAQ
 


Users online
total users: 597

Last Post
get a free online education from mit
by TorridZoneIgloo
May. 09, 2008 16:52

Board statistics
We have a total of 79452 posts!
 TechTutorials
 CertifyPro
 Certnotes
 Web Host Reviews
 CBT Training
 MCSE Boot Camp
 MCSE Training

Frame Relay LMI And LMI Autosense

For success on your CCNA 640-802 and CCENT exams, you need to understand how and why Frame Relay LMI messages operate. You need to know this for real-world networking as well, since Frame Relay is prevalent in today's networks - and without LMI, you have no Frame Relay!

The Local Management Interface (LMI) messages are sent between the DCE, typically the service provider, and the DTE, the Cisco router. LMI Status messages serve as keepalives for the frame connection. If keepalives are not continually received by both the DCE and DTE, the frame connection will drop. The LMI also indicates the PVC status to the router, reflected as either active or inactive.

The LMI types must match on the DTE and DCE for the PVC to be established. There are three types of LMI:
  • Cisco (the default)
  • ansi
  • q933a
The LMI type can be changed with the frame lmi-type command. Before doing anything with the frame relay commands, though, we have to enable frame relay on the interface with the encapsulation frame-relay command. Remember, the default encapsulation type on a Cisco Serial interface is HDLC.

R1(config)#interface serial0

R1(config-if)#encapsulation ?

atm-dxi ATM-DXI encapsulation
frame-relay Frame Relay networks
hdlc Serial HDLC synchronous
lapb LAPB (X.25 Level 2)
ppp Point-to-Point protocol
smds Switched Megabit Data Service (SMDS)
x25 X.25

R1(config-if)#encapsulation frame-relay

R1(config-if)#frame-relay lmi-type ?

cisco
ansi
q933a


We can hardcode the LMI type as shown in that example, and there's another way to get the LMI to match with the remote DCE. LMI Autosense has the router send out an LMI Status message for all three LMI types.

The router then waits for a response for one of those LMI types from the DCE. When the router sees the response to its LMI Autosense messages, the router will then send only the same LMI type it received from the DCE.

On rare occasions - such as your CCNA exam, perhaps :) - the Frame LMI may not match. We'll take a look at such a scenario in the next installment of my exclusive Cisco CCENT / CCNA 640-802 certification exam tutorial series!

About the Author:
Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage , home of free CCNA and CCNP tutorials! Pass the CCNA exam with Chris Bryant!


 CareerAcademy
Certification training videos with private instructors. Topics cover Microsoft MCSE, CompTIA, CISSP & Cisco exams. Courses also come with official practice exams with 7x24 mentors.
more products...
 Netwind Learning
Free Demo. Certification Training for A+, MCSE, MCTS Microsoft.NET, Cisco CCNA, CCNP, CCVP, CCSP, Java, Oracle, Linux, PMP and 100's of other courses.
more products...
 EDULEARN
Certification Training on CD-ROMs & Videos: Microsoft MCSE Training, A+ Certification, Windows 2003, & Free demos. MCSE certification training includes videos and labs.
more products...
 CBT Nuggets
Our products offer classroom training at home. We offer CBTs for Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA, INFOSEC, LPI, Java, CIW, Citrix, CWNA, CISSP, CEH, Oracle, and other certifications.
Free Videos
more products...


ADVERTISE | PARTNERSHIPS | PRIVACY POLICY | DISCLAIMER | | CONTACT


IT Showcase