DLCI

A DLCI uniquely identifies a virtual circuit on a physical link and has local significance only for that link. A DLCI can be used on different physical ports to address different virtual circuits. A virtual circuit between two DTE devices can be addressed with different DLCIs at the two ends, as shown in Figure 49.

Because the virtual circuits in a Frame Relay network are connection oriented, each DLCI on a physical port is destined for a different peer device. DLCIs are the Frame Relay addresses of peer devices.

The maximum number of PVCs that can be created on a Frame Relay interface is 1024. The user configurable DLCIs for the PVCs are in the range 16 to 1007. Other DLCIs are reserved. For example, DLCI 0 and DLCI 1023 are reserved for the LMI protocol to transfer control messages.