Abstract: To efficiently transmit frame relay packets between terrestrial frame relay networks (10, 12) over a satellite/wireless network (14), the packets are processed by frame relay processors (16, 18) at both ends of the satellite/wireless network (14). Variable length frame relay packets are segmented into smaller packets called spackets. The system utilizes priority queueing and a scheduler (24) transmits the spackets over the satellite/wireless link. To enhance the quality of the satellite/wireless link, each frame contains a variable number of Reed-Solomon (RS) check bytes used for error correction. Further, several frames are interleaved before transmission over the satellite/wireless link to spread the effect of burst errors over several frames. Additionally, a header compression technique saves bandwidth by compressing a Virtual Circuit (VC) identifier of the frame relay packet into a smaller value and maps the VCs to a value as specified by the size of the compressed VC field.