Satyam Unveils Frame Relay On ATM

Satyam Infoway, India’s premier private sector ISP has unveiled a new service, ExpressFrame@Satyam, a frame relay protocol run on an ATM backbone.

This will enable businesses to interconnect nationwide offices according to individual requirements. Earlier the company was following the TCP/IP protocol.

ExpressFrame@Satyam, similar to Wide Area Networking (WAN), provides
point-to-point dedicated virtual circuits that support multiple protocols
with guaranteed bandwidth, irrespective of the traffic, and without actually
taking a physical leased line.

This service enables customers to take
“Permanent Virtual Circuits” (PVC) of required bandwidth between any two
points on the Satyam network, depending on their specific traffic requirement.

“This is the first time such a superior technology is offered in the country, thus revolutionizing wide area networking,” said A. Srinivasagopalan, senior vice-president.

He said that the frame relay service offered will be an ideal platform for businesses running mission-critical applications such as enterprise resource planning packages, intranets and database applications, as the speed and performance is much superior to any other services offered today.

He claims that the response time was faster than very small aperture terminals (VSATs).

Satyam will provide a guaranteed bandwidth to the user, termed as “Confirmed
Information Rate” (CIR). This type of service will benefit users with a
distributed application environment, where applications are residing in
different locations or where all applications reside in a central location,
from which information & data needs to be accessed.

Under this service
offering, the user will have the option to define the minimum CIR and the
maximum CIR levels. Under normal traffic conditions, the PVC will operate on
minimum CIR levels and when the traffic increases, the CIR expands to
accommodate the increase in traffic without encountering congestion or delays.

The system has been on trial for three months and has been found to work
satisfactorily. Satyam expects to get one-third of its income from its
network services, as the target segment starts with industries listing a turnover of at least US$5 million. As of now, the ExpressFrame@Satyam will be
available at Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Satyam Infoway has invested about US$20 million to install the network across
the country, and has been offering network services to corporate customers,
of which is the TCP/IP public data network.

The network service has a
bandwidth capacity of 2 Mbps. The ATM backbone over which
ExpressFrames@Satyam is being offered has been build using CiscoIGX
Stratracom platform, which enables guaranteed bandwidth to customers.

Corporations pay on the basis of port charges and use of bandwidth. Most
companies lease their equipment from Satyam for the IP network which
could be similarly replaced with equipment for frame relay. The upgrade
would cost about 20 per cent of the original investment, but the benefits
are far more commensurate, claims Srinivasgopalan.