Frame Relay is a major topic on your CCNA and CCENT certification exams, and for good reason. Frame Relay is a part of just about every Wide Area Network (WAN) you'll ever work with, and you've got to know how to configure and troubleshoot FR to be successful in the exam room and your job.

To help you pass the CCNA and CCENT exams and be prepared for real-world success, here are 10 free Cisco certification exam training questions on Frame Relay. Some have choices, some do not - after all, there's no multiple choice at the command line!

1. Your Frame Relay provider is guaranteeing you a certain amount of bandwidth that will be available to you at any given time. What acronym is used to describe that guaranteed bandwidth?

A. DE

B. CIR

C. LMI

D. BECN

E. FECN

2. A Frame Relay cloud consists of what device types?

A. Frame Relay switches acting as DCEs

B. Frame Relay switches acting as DTEs

C. Frame Relay routers acting as DCEs

D. Frame Relay routers acting as DTEs

3. Which of the following terms describes Frame Relay?

A. packet-switching

B. circuit-switching

C. relatively inexpensive when compared to other WAN connectivity methods

D. relatively expensive when compared to other WAN connectivity methods

4. What message types serve as keepalives between the DTE and DCE?

A. LMI

B. DLCI

C. DE

D. CIR

5. Short answer: What is the default encapsulation type of a Cisco router Serial interface?

6. Short answer: When LMI Autosense is in effect, what message type(s) does the DTE send to the DCE?

7. Short answer: When LMI Autosense is in effect, what message type(s) does the DCE then send to the DTE after receiving the message(s) referred to in question 6?

8. What command resulted in the following output?

LMI Statistics for interface Serial0 (Frame Relay DTE) LMI TYPE = ANSI

Invalid Unnumbered info 0 Invalid Prot Disc 0

Invalid dummy Call Ref 0 Invalid Msg Type 0

Invalid Status Message 0 Invalid Lock Shift 0

Invalid Information ID 0 Invalid Report IE Len 0

Invalid Report Request 0 Invalid Keep IE Len 0

Num Status Enq. Sent 121 Num Status msgs Rcvd 94

Num Update Status Rcvd 0 Num Status Timeouts 26

A. show frame pvc

B. show frame lmi

C. show frame timeouts

D. debug frame lmi

9. What command resulted in the following output?

R1#

3d04h: Serial0(out): StEnq, myseq 49, yourseen 94, DTE down

3d04h: datagramstart = 0xE329E4, datagramsize = 14

3d04h: FR encap = 0x00010308

3d04h: 00 75 95 01 01 00 03 02 31 5E

A. show frame pvc

B. show frame lmi

C. show frame dte

D. debug frame lmi

10. Short answer: What protocol enables dynamic Frame Relay mapping?

Here are the answers! No peeking!

1. (B). That's the Committed Information Rate - the CIR.

2. (A). A Frame Relay cloud consists of Frame Relay switches, and those are DCEs.

3. (A, C). Frame Relay is a packet-switching protocol, and one major advantage of Frame is its cost - it's relatively cheap!

4. (A). The Local Management Interface sounds like some kind of GUI, but it's not. Among other functions, the LMI serves as a keepalive between the DTE and DCE. If there's an LMI mismatch, the physical interface will remain up but the line protocol will go down.

5. The default encapsulation type of a Cisco Serial interface is HDLC, as verified here with show interface serial0. This particular interface is shut down, but the default encapsulation type still appears in the command output.

R1#show int serial0

Serial0 is administratively down, line protocol is down

Hardware is HD64570

MTU 1500 bytes, BW 1544 Kbit, DLY 20000 usec,

reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255

Encapsulation HDLC, loopback not set

6 & 7. When LMI Autosense is in operation, the DTE will send three LMI Status messages. The DCE will respond with one LMI Status message. The DTE sees that Status message coming in, and from that point on only sends the LMI Status message type that matches the type it received from the DCE.

8. (B) That output is the result of running the show frame lmi command. An excellent starting point for Frame Relay troubleshooting.

9. (D) That output is the result of running debug frame lmi. Always be careful when running debugs in a production network - never run a debug unless you're sure of the resulting output, which can overwhelm the router.

10. Inverse ARP enables dynamic Frame Relay mapping. Inverse ARP is often disabled in today's networks, and this is done by running the no frame-relay inverse-arp command at the interface level.

Look for more Cisco certification exam practice questions on this website!