FRF.12

The FRF.12 specification describes the method of fragmenting Frame Relay frames into smaller frames.

Background

When multiplexing packet data from different virtual circuits or flows, Quality of Service concerns often arise. This is because a frame from one virtual circuit may occupy the line for a long enough period of time to disrupt a service guarantee given to another virtual circuit.

Fragmentation

Fragmentation is a well known method for addressing this. An incoming long packet is broken up into a sequence of shorter packets and enough information is added to reassemble that long frame at the far end.

FRF.12

FRF.12 is a specification from the Frame Relay Forum which specifies how to perform fragmentation on frame relay traffic in several different scenarios.