Frame Relay Traffic Shaping - Legacy Configuration

This is a basic lab to play around with frame-relay traffic shaping, FRTS. It uses the legacy configuration method rather than MCQ. INE have a great article here describing the other options.


This article assumes some knowledge of QoS terms such as CIR, Bc, Be and Tc.

The lab used looks like this:



I'll use the GNS3 built in frame switch to make life easier, the config is below:



The basic router configurations are:

hostname R1
!
interface Serial0/0
ip address 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0
encapsulation frame-relay
clock rate 2000000


hostname R2
!
interface Serial0/0
ip address 192.168.0.2 255.255.255.0
encapsulation frame-relay
clock rate 2000000

In this mode no shaping is enabled, WFQ is the default for serial interfaces below E1 size (2.048mbps).

R2#show int s0/0
Serial0/0 is up, line protocol is up
Internet address is 192.168.0.2/24
Encapsulation FRAME-RELAY, loopback not set
Queueing strategy: weighted fair
Output queue: 0/1000/64/0 (size/max total/threshold/drops)
Conversations 0/1/256 (active/max active/max total)
Reserved Conversations 0/0 (allocated/max allocated)
Available Bandwidth 1158 kilobits/sec

To turn on FRTS use the commands as below:

R1(config)#int s0/0
R1(config-if)#frame-relay traffic-shaping

This gives the interface a default configuration, which is 56kbps and has Bc set to 7000bits. This can cause problems with subinterfaces as they'll end up at 56k unless configured otherwise. The queuing method is also changed to FIFO.

R1#show int s0/0
Serial0/0 is up, line protocol is up
Internet address is 192.168.0.1/24
Encapsulation FRAME-RELAY, loopback not set
Queueing strategy: fifo
Output queue: 0/40 (size/max)

R1#show traffic-shape

Interface Se0/0
       Access Target    Byte   Sustain   Excess    Interval  Increment Adapt
VC     List    Rate     Limit   bits/int bits/int  (ms)      (bytes)  Active
102            56000     875    7000      0         125       875       -

The actual configuration is done in a class map:

R1(config)#map-class frame-relay TEST_MAP

The options are configured using the frame-relay command:

R1(config-map-class)#frame-relay ?
adaptive-shaping Adaptive traffic rate adjustment, Default = none
bc Committed burst size (Bc), Default = 7000 bits
be Excess burst size (Be), Default = 0 bits
cir Committed Information Rate (CIR), Default = 56000 bps
congestion Congestion management parameters
custom-queue-list VC custom queueing
end-to-end Configure frame-relay end-to-end VC parameters
fair-queue VC fair queueing
fecn-adapt Enable Traffic Shaping reflection of FECN as BECN
fragment fragmentation - Requires Frame Relay traffic-shaping to be
configured at the interface level
holdq Hold queue size for VC
idle-timer Idle timeout for a SVC, Default = 120 sec
interface-queue PVC interface queue parameters
ip Assign a priority queue for RTP streams
mincir Minimum acceptable CIR, Default = CIR/2 bps
priority-group VC priority queueing
tc Policing Measurement Interval (Tc)
traffic-rate VC traffic rate
voice voice options

There are a couple of ways to shape traffic, the traffic-rate command sets the rate & peak rate, IOS then calculates Bc and Be based on a time interval of 125ms. To set the rate to 128kbps and the peak rate to 256kbps:

R1(config-map-class)#frame-relay traffic-rate 128000 256000
R1(config-if)#^Z
R1#show traffic-shape
Interface Se0/0
       Access Target    Byte   Sustain   Excess    Interval  Increment Adapt
VC     List    Rate     Limit   bits/int bits/int  (ms)      (bytes)  Active
102            128000  18000   128000    128000    125       2000 -

Note that Tc (interval) is still 125ms.

IOS then calculates Be as being Tc * (PIR - CIR), which is .125 * (256000 - 128000) = 16000.



You can also specifically configure the committed information rate (CIR) and Burst Excess (Be) in the map-class, this allows you to change the value of Tc which is calculated as Bc/CIR as below on R2:

map-class frame-relay TEST_MAP_R2
frame-relay cir 128000
frame-relay bc 12800

R2#show traffic-shape

Interface Se0/0
       Access Target    Byte   Sustain   Excess    Interval  Increment Adapt
VC     List    Rate     Limit   bits/int bits/int  (ms)      (bytes)  Active
201            128000    1600   12800     0             100       1600 -

You can also see the shaping configuration by looking at the PVC:

R2#show frame pvc 201

PVC Statistics for interface Serial0/0 (Frame Relay DTE)

DLCI = 201, DLCI USAGE = LOCAL, PVC STATUS = ACTIVE, INTERFACE = Serial0/0

input pkts 8 output pkts 7 in bytes 622
out bytes 588 dropped pkts 0 in pkts dropped 0
out pkts dropped 0 out bytes dropped 0
in FECN pkts 0 in BECN pkts 0 out FECN pkts 0
out BECN pkts 0 in DE pkts 0 out DE pkts 0
out bcast pkts 2 out bcast bytes 68
5 minute input rate 0 bits/sec, 0 packets/sec
5 minute output rate 0 bits/sec, 0 packets/sec
pvc create time 00:27:55, last time pvc status changed 00:27:55
cir 128000 bc 12800 be 0 byte limit 1600 interval 100
mincir 64000 byte increment 1600 Adaptive Shaping none
pkts 1 bytes 34 pkts delayed 0 bytes delayed 0
shaping inactive
traffic shaping drops 0
Queueing strategy: fifo
Output queue 0/40, 0 drop, 0 dequeued