I have a frame relay network running 9 different locations. every day for the past month I have been having random periods where the network drops all of the locations connections up and down for sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes hours at a time, up and down and up and down. It has been frustrating me, and even Frontier( ISP) cannot figure it out. they have changed out hardware, changed ports, pvc's, you name it. Any ideas. Can it be something on a single machine bringing down the whole network?

Ah Frame Relay, one of my favorite, in a perverted sort of way, topics. Frame relay is a rip off. But I digress. Unless your ISP is the phone company who owns the copper and has complete access to the central offices where the switchs/hardware center, there isn't much your vender can do but submit tech support calls and deal with the telephone company. Unfortunately the rules of the road dictate that you can't deal with the phone company directly but only the ISP. This means you are limited by the ISP's knowledge of FR and their ability to talk to the phone company. Here is what you can do: Document when and what circuits go down. I am assuming you are in a star configuration with all sites pointed to you at the main site with one router at each site. PVC's from each to you. Are your routers setup for telnet and do you know how to deal with the routers? It would be great if you could get the router stats like how many crc errors, framing or port resets, etc. What you need to determine is WHERE is the break. Do the wan links from remote to you stay active or do they also report on the remote router wan interface as being down? Reason this is important is that by determining if the break is between you and the cloud [which would effect everyones connectivity but not "down" the remote wan interface] vs every wan interface or particular wan interfaces go down, it helps to isolate where the problem is. Trick here is you have to be able to direct them. And you have to be persistant. I have dealt with Qwest for 5+ years and Frame Relay. You have to keep them on task. The great thing about frame relay is the phone company can track stats. Make a request that you want the stats of all your FR circuits during the trouble periods. Now they may tell you they can't provide them. This may be true if they have older equipment. BUT they can monitor the circuits actively and gather the stats. This is something you CAN request especially in consideration of the loss of revenue you have experienced [buzz words]. Would be great if at that time you had wan problems. Stats to look for would be packets marked red, errors indicating communication or hardware issues. Question you should ask is is this a hardware or software issue? Since you mention rebuilding PVC's I am a bit concerned. A private virtual circuit is just two points pointing at each other through the phone company's network. My take is I don't see a high level of confidence here. Someone is guessing. If even after a pvc remake the problems occur then it can only be hardware and its connections. "Can it be something on a single machine bringing down the whole network?" I don't see how. Routers are usually configured to not pass thru broadcasts. Network saturation would show up on routers lan stats and would effect your local server communication. Hopefully I didn't ramble on too much and this will help. Give a person a fish you feed them for a day. Ask a person to internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

Cheap dsu/csu router cards. Get a true csu/dsu or contact the provider about being sure who is using who's clock.