Press releases

Date	Title
November 3, 1997	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - AIW15
September 26, 1997	AIW holds Data Link Switching (DLSw) V2.0 Testing
July 15, 1997	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - AIW14
March 24, 1997	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - AIW13
November 4, 1996	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - AIW12
July 19, 1996	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - AIW11
November 2, 1995	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - AIW9
October 1995	Data Link Switching Interoperability Test
August 24, 1995	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - AIW8
May 4, 1995	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - AIW7
March 2, 1995	APPN Multivendor Connectivity Test
February 7, 1995	APPN Multivendor Connectivity Test Planned
January 16, 1995	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - DLSw Version 1
October 13, 1994	APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) - AIW6
June 24, 1994	APPN Multivendor Connectivity Test

IBM is chairing the 15th Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking Implementers’ Workshop in Raleigh, NC November 3-5. Recent developments at the AIW and items of interest are summarized here:

• IBM's submission for Branch Extender software technology is expected to receive final approval. When deployed in APPN and High PerformanceRouting products, Branch Extender can provide full HPR reliability and availability across a network with many branch offices.
• IBM's submission for Enterprise Extender, which provides HPR in IP networks, will be a topic of discussion. The submission has been reviewed by AIW members, and there is agreement that the technology is ready for approval as a standard. The AIW has endorsed all of the main concepts and final approval is to be expected soon.
• There are now several implementations of AIW standard Management Information Bases for managing APPN and HPR networks. Discussions will compare implementation experiences from the different vendors, demonstrating cooperation among these vendors to deliver interoperable products for customers.
• AIW members will hold a discussion on requirements for a new round of HPR interoperability tests. The AIW has organized multivendor interoperability tests in the past but several vendors have shipped products delivering the full HPR function since the last of these tests.
• The final Extended Border Node specification will be published. Agreement on the EBN function was reached previously, but the final document is now available.
• The Data Link Switching group will discuss the results of the recent DLSw version 2 interoperability test.
• A new version of the Dependent Logical Unit Requester specification, version 1.3 has been published. This document includes many changes and enhancements to the DLUR architecture that have been discussed and approved over the last year.
• A variety of tutorials, including an update on the Internet Engineering Task Force TN3270 workgroup activities, will be presented to help educate and share information among the AIW members.

The AIW is an industry consortium of 45 member companies formed for cooperative work on HPR, APPN and SNA-related implementations and standards. Members, including IBM, participate to facilitate the availability of interoperable, high quality APPN products from a wide variety of vendors. The AIW is a forum for sharing information about APPN, its implementations, and customer experiences; helping one another with implementation problems; developing any necessary enhancements; and promoting the use of APPN. Additional information on the AIW can be found at http://www.networking.ibm.com/app/aiwhome.htm.

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Data Link Switching (DLSw) continues to be truly a multi-vendor standard for carrying SNA and NetBios over TCP/IP. Recently, five vendors, members of the APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW), successfully completed a four day long interoperability test of the latest DLSw V2.0 (Informational RFC 2166) Enhancements developed by the AIW.

These enhancements merge the legacy SNA and NetBIOS systems with the up and coming Multicast IP technology. The tests conducted prove that SNA and IP can work together and place DLSw at the forefront of emerging applications using Multicast IP.

The DLSw Version 2 Interoperability Test was held September 22-26, 1997, in Kirkland, WA, at the test lab of Wall Data. This was the second multi-vendor interoperability testing of DLSw by the AIW DLSw Related Interest Group (RIG) to verify their products can communicate successfully. Five vendors - 3Com, Bay Networks, Cisco, IBM, and Wall Data - participated in testing their DLSw V2.0 (RFC 2166) implementations.

The DLSw V2.0 specification was completed in March 1997 and granted RFC status in June 1997. It is a tribute to the vendors to have implemented the enhancement in such a short time frame and shows their commitment to meeting their customers needs.

DLSw carries SNA and, optionally, NetBios traffic across wide area networks (WANs). The end systems may be connected via a variety of data links, including synchronous data link control (SDLC) links or token ring and Ethernet LANs. The network between the data link switches is TCP/IP.

With the DLSw V2.0 (RFC 2166) enhancements, customers can expect to see major improvements in scalability. This is achieved by issuing explorer frames via a Multicast IP message only when an end user needs to establish a connection. This discovery method helps reduce the administrative burden that current users face. When the destination is found, a single bi-directional TCP connection is formed. DLSw V1.0 (Informational RFC 1795) connections typically had used two unidirectional TCP connections. To further control the number of connections, TCP connections may be disconnected when no longer in use.

The testing verified that an end station connection request produced and sent Multicast IP explorers. The successful reception of this frame resulted in the establishing of TCP connections and performing DLSw capabilities exchanges. Once connected, the end stations, including SNA type 2.0 and 2.1 nodes on token ring to a host or AS/400, and NetBios end stations on token ring and Ethernet, exchanged data. It should be further noted that the testing also proved the viability of using different Multicast IP protocols with vendors being able to send explorer frames from a network using one Multicast IP protocol through a network using a different Multicast IP protocol.

Each vendor tested with every other vendor in a round robin style. The DLSw Version 2.0 Interoperability Test was successful, promoting interaction among developers of key industry DLSw implementations. Information, tips, and techniques were exchanged with the common goal of multi-vendor DLSw connectivity.

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The AIW is an industry consortium of 47 member companies formed for cooperative work on HPR, APPN and SNA-related implementations and standards. Members participate to facilitate the availability of interoperable, high quality HPR products from a wide variety of vendors. The AIW is a forum for sharing information about HPR, its implementations, and customer experiences, helping one another with implementation problems, developing any necessary enhancements, and promoting the use of HPR. Information on the AIW can be found at: http://www.networking.ibm.com/app/aiwhome.htm.

IBM introduced the Branch Extender technology at the Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking (APPN) Implementers' Workshop (AIW) held this week in San Jose, CA. It will be incorporated into future IBM eNetwork Software and Nways products and will also be made available to other vendors through the AIW.

Branch Extender can significantly increase the value of High Performance Routing (HPR) networks by providing full HPR reliability and availability across a network with many branch offices. Enhancements include:

• Scalability: Branch Extender improves the scalability of HPR networks by increasing the number of nodes that can participate in a single network. This is accomplished by improving network topology management and by automatically registering branch resources to the wide area network. Branch Extender makes a large network act like a small network by sending fewer network control messages.
• Cost Effectiveness: Branch Extender enables customers to more effectively utilize their SNA network and application assets. It optimizes branch-to-branch connections as well as connections between branches and data centers, potentially cutting link costs in half.

In addition to the introduction of IBM's Branch Extender, other topics of discussion at this week's AIW conference will include:

• IBM's work on technology that exploits HPR with its advantages when accessing SNA applications using IP networks. This technology also enables customers who have parallel IP and SNA networks to more easily exploit both networks for SNA traffic.
• Expected final approval for Extended Border Node.
• AIW's continued work to finalize standard Management Information Bases (MIBs) for managing APPN networks. The APPN MIB, RFC #2155, has progressed to Proposed Standard in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
• Expected final approval on APPN changes for Year 2000 readiness.

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The AIW is an industry consortium of 45 member companies formed for cooperative work on HPR, APPN and SNA-related implementations and standards. Members, including IBM, participate to facilitate the availability of interoperable, high quality APPN products from a wide variety of vendors. The AIW is a forum for sharing information about APPN, its implementations, and customer experiences; helping one another with implementation problems; developing any necessary enhancements; and promoting the use of APPN.

A presentation on APPN Scalability concludes that networks of 600 network nodes are feasible. During a plenary session, IBM gave a presentation about the scalability of APPN networks. IBM has developed a scalability model which enables them to predict the percent of overhead that can be expected for network control traffic. This model will be available for customers to use to plan and evaluate APPN. This methodology that eliminates the guesswork from planning large networks and pinpoints the parameters that are most likely to limit the size of growing networks. This work showed that there is no one absolute maximum size for an APPN network. The maximum size depends on the number of network nodes in a single topology subnetwork, the rate of link failures, the rate of directory searches, whether a central directory server is present, the number of CP-CP session partners per network node, etc.. Attendees learned that it is feasible to construct a network of 600 or more network nodes, assuming a low rate of link failures.

Tandem gave a presentation on their APPN end node implementation. The presentation focused on the unique aspects of implementing APPN on Tandem's fault-tolerant platform.

• Data Link Switching version 2 standard approved

  Data Link Switching Version 2 received final approval from the Data Link Switching Related Interest Group. Version 2 adds new capabilities that allow DLSw-based networks to scale to larger numbers of routers using multicast IP. It also adds clarifications based on implementation experiences.

• HPR Adds Multi-Link Transmission Groups

  IBM has added HPR multi-link transmission groups to its Communications Server/2 and 3746 Network Node. During this meeting, IBM shared the MLTG specification with AIW members. MLTG allows additional performance, flexibility and reliability by using multiple physical "links" as one transmission group for routing data. MLTG was previously available in NCP for subarea networks.

• APPN internetworking standard one step from final approval

  Further progress was made towards delivering a Border Node specification implementable by AIW members. The draft standard, being made available by IBM through the AIW, progressed to "Approved Pages" status, the last stage before final approval. The standard is expected to be complete by mid-1997. Border node is an APPN technology to replace SNA Network Interconnect (SNI) gateways. It can interconnect different APPN enterprise intranets while providing security firewalls, or divide a large APPN network into several connected subnetworks.

  IBM contributed a specification for the High Performance Routing border node, also called HBN. HBN extends the value of HPR across multiple networks by allowing ANR routing between networks and HPR endpoints to be in different networks. The function is available in the latest release of VTAM, Version 4.4.

  The border node specification is expected to receive final approval in the July 1997 meeting. APPN source code vendor, Data Connection, Limited, contributed a proposal for a border node subset. The proposal will be discussed at the upcoming meeting. This subset may allow additional flexibility in designing networks by making some Extended Border Node capabilities available in smaller, less powerful network devices.

• HPR enhancements

  IBM and DCL defined several enhancements to the HPR protocols to improve performance and stability in some specific cases. Work continues to fine-tune the algorithms and improve HPR function while preserving interoperability with existing products.

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The AIW is an industry consortium of 45 member companies formed for cooperative work on APPN and SNA-related implementations and standards. Members participate to facilitate the availability of interoperable high quality APPN products from a wide variety of vendors. The AIW is a forum for sharing information about APPN, its implementations and customer experiences; helping one another with implementation problems; developing any necessary enhancements; and promoting the use of APPN.

Rick McGee, Vice President of IBM's Networking Division, will speak on the future of high-speed networking. He is expected to discuss how the SNA-over-ATM developments fit into IBM's view that future networks will be characterized by switching, rather than routing. In a recent speech, McGee said that ATM is the universal network that will carry all kinds of traffic, from video to transactions. In the WAN, Frame Relay is an important first step towards switching that many customers are taking right now. In the campus, ATM LAN emulation is an ideal step towards native ATM.. He views the AIW's "HPR Extensions for ATM Networks" as a milestone in the integration of switching and routing, marrying the world's largest body of networked business applications with this important transport technology, in an open standard.

McGee is also expected to discuss IBM's intensified focus on the integration and convergence of HPR and IP through world-class offerings on every networking platform, to enable access to enterprise data in any form, across any network, from any client to any server. He recently underscored the strategic importance of both HPR and IP in IBM's vision of "network-centric computing" in a thrust that crosses IBM's entire product line from mainframe servers, to front-end processors, switches and routers, to desktop and mobile clients.

• "HPR Extensions for ATM Networks" standard approved

  "HPR Extensions for ATM Networks" gained final approval as an AIW standard after a peer review by the ATM Forum.

  Until now, few applications have been able to take advantage of ATM's full capability to support different service levels for different kinds of traffic. SNA applications are "ATM-ready", because they have always specified a class of service (COS). The COS selects priority, response time, cost, security, and other criteria important to users. The AIW standard maps COS to ATM Quality of Service, enriching the interface between HPR and ATM. It lowers the cost of networking, while affording better service, by using ATM capacity more fully. Private networks will run more economically by delivering equal response time for a lower capital cost, by means of smaller, less expensive ATM switches. Public-carrier ATM charges may be lower, because customers will need less bandwidth.

• SNA for Java newly available

  During the conference, IBM announced that its "SNA for Java" has just been made available on the AlphaWorks Web site at http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com. SNA for Java enables machine-independent Java programs to interoperate with existing APPC applications.

• Work continues on APPN internetworking standard

  Further progress was made towards delivering a Border Node specification implementable by AIW members. Border Node is an IBM-developed APPN technology to replace SNA Network Interconnect (SNI) gateways. It can interconnect different APPN enterprise intranets while providing security firewalls, or divide a large APPN network into several connected subnetworks.

• DLSw RIG progressing toward scalability standard

  Acknowledging shortcomings in current DLSw products, the AIW's DLSw RIG continued work to develop a solution to improve DLSw scalability. DLSw is a means of encapsulating SNA traffic in TCP/IP.

• Multivendor HPR showcase planned

  An interoperability demo featuring HPR products from multiple vendors is under discussion. Venues being considered include Interop and others.

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The AIW is an industry-wide consortium of networking vendors that develops APPN and SNA-related standards, and facilitates high quality, fully interoperable APPN and SNA internetworking products.

Members participate in the AIW to facilitate the availability of fully interoperable, high quality APPN products from a wide variety of vendors. The AIW serves as a forum to share information about APPN, its implementations and customer experiences; to help one another with implementation problems; to develop any necessary enhancements; and to promote the use of APPN.

Following is a summary of key topics being discussed at the 11th AIW.

High Performance Routing Extensions for ATM Networks received "Closed pages" (CP) approval in the HPR Special Interest Group, and will be made available in August to the ATM Forum (ATMF) for review and comments in accordance with an existing AIW-ATMF liaison. Pending favorable comments, it will become architecture of record in September, enabling vendors to ship products with this function. This standard lets customers exploit ATM QOS from existing SNA applications, giving them a way to meet response time goals for business-critical applications over ATM while minimizing link costs. This is done by matching each application's needs with an ATM virtual circuit with specific characteristics, such as reserved bandwidth or best effort.

HPR gives users an excellent transport for integrating network protocols, buildson SNA prioritization, dependability, reliability and class of service, and provides an easy upgrade path to ATM.

IBM is proposing an Application Program Interface (API) to let programmers access the Common Programming Interface for Communications (CPI-C) from Java programs. It would enable Java applications to run over APPN/HPR. The API will let customers use the stable, enterprise-ready HPR networking they want, along with Java's dynamic application-download capability and platform independence. IBM expects to put object code for the Java bindings for 12 of the CPI-C calls necessary to do the five classic transactions, and sample code, on the web.

Incorporating the TCP/IP Domain Name Service into APPN networks was the topic of discussion at the CPI-C Related Interest Group (RIG). The group also discussed non-blocking extensions for CPI-C, and the enablement of Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) security functions.

Progress is being made on Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Management Information Bases for APPN. The Dependent LU Requester (DLUR) MIB went CP, and IBM submitted a draft MIB for Extended Border Node. After AIW approval, these MIBs will be submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force.

IBM revealed its specification for encapsulating SNA Alert data in SNMP traps. The function shipped in the Nways Campus Manager LAN for AIX in June. Implementing to the specification will allow other APPN platform vendors to be managed from the Nways Campus Manager.

Work continues in the Extended Border Node SIG to review IBM's latest EBN draft. EBN is an IBM-developed architecture for APPN internetworking. A replacement for SNA Network Interconnect (SNI), EBN lets customers interconnect many enterprises using APPN, or subdivide large APPN networks. Approval is expected in late 1996 or early 1997. EBN has been available on VTAM V4R2 since mid-1995.

A proposal for Data Link Switching scalability has been submitted by 3Com Corp. DLSw's scalability problems have been an ongoing concern. The 3Com proposal has broad support among AIW members.

APPN is starring at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Three terabytes of data will be transmitted over 2000 miles of fiber, from 250 LANs and 35 venues to a central mainframe. Requirements included consistent subsecond response time, high availability, reliability, and easy deployment and management. APPC client/server protocols over APPN/HPR met all these requirements. The 250 LANs interconnect over frame relay. In the event a WAN link is down, each LAN can also function as an independent APPN network and record results in a local database for later transmission to the central CICS database.

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The APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) was held October 31- November 2, 1995 in Raleigh, NC at the North Raleigh Hilton Hotel. The AIW facilitates fully interoperable, high quality APPN products from a wide variety of vendors. This was a working meeting with general sessions and several Special Interest Groups (SIG) and Birds of a Feather Sessions (BOF). The following events occurred at AIW9, reinforcing APPN as an open technology that's widely implemented:

APPN-ATM Synergy:

AIW members saw progress in moving the HPR native access to ATM architecture towards final approval. The document, written by IBM, is expected to receive Approved Direction (AD) this week. This is an important milestone because it provides SNA customer the best method of interfacing their applications to ATM. It marries ATM-ready applications (SNA) with the industry-acknowledged best networking architecture (HPR) with the best new hardware technology (ATM).

APPN's sophisticated "Connection Network" technology is a ready-made solution to the problem of optimal ("zero-hop") campus routing; this problem is currently a focus of the ATM Forum's Multi-Protocol Over ATM working group. While all existing SNA and APPN run well over ATM LAN Emulation and ATM-Frame Relay interworking, HPR native access is preferred because it maps SNA's Class of Service to ATM's Quality of Service, applies APPN's Connection Networks to address resolution and zero-hop routing, and employs HPR's ARB and RTP to optimally utilize ATM's high speed, high quality, connection-oriented links.

On a related topic, the AIW will be providing SNA content to the ATM Forum's MPOA working group. The AIW plans to create a liaison with the ATM Forum to identify and develop synergies with the still-evolving MPOA.

MIBS:

Several Management Information Base (MIB) working groups meet regularly at the AIW, including the AIW's APPN and HPR MIB SIG and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) SNA Network-Accessible Unit (NAU) MIB. To obtain AD status at this meeting, participants continued work to standardize the IBM-developed APPN MIB. The HPR MIB already has AD, and the group will complete it once the APPN MIB is further along.

Border Node and APPN Reference SIGs:

AIW members reviewed an updated draft of IBM's extended border node specification, which will allow the construction of efficient APPN internetworks of unlimited size. Approval of the border node document is expected next year.

The APPN Reference SIG, charged with enhancements and maintenance of APPN architecture, approved several minor enhancements and fixes. It is also continuing work on a proposal made by Wall Data and InSession Pty., Ltd. to extend APPN directory services to non-SNA resources, making APPN networks more hospitable for applications. The SIG also discussed applying IBM's LAN discovery architecture to make APPN even easier to use.

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Data Link Switching (DLSw) reached another milestone in its emergence as the multivendor standard for carrying SNA and NetBIOS over TCP/IP by holding a successful week-long interoperability test. Eight DLSw developers tested their implementations of DLSw Version 1, also known as RFC 1795.

"Users with SNA and TCP/IP have long wanted to integrate them. DLSw is a great solution because it requires no changes in the end systems, ensures reliability, and minimizes wide area traffic." said Louise Herndon Wells, chair of the DLSw group. "DLSw is now a proven multivendor solution from all major vendors for integrating SNA and TCP/IP networks."

The DLSw Version 1 Interoperability Test was held October 2-6, 1995 in Billerica, MA at the test lab of Bay Networks. This was the first multivendor interoperability testing session of DLSw Version 1 (RFC 1795) by the DLSw Related Interest Group (RIG) to verify their products can communicate successfully. Seven vendors--3Com Corporation, Bay Networks, Cisco, Data Connection Limited, IBM, Proteon, and Synaptel--were participants testing their DLSw implementations and Wandel & Goltermann, a testing product vendor, tested its DLSw package.

DLSw carries SNA and, optionally, NetBIOS traffic across wide area networks (WANs). The end systems may be on a variety of data links, including synchronous data link control (SDLC) links or token ring or Ethernet LANs. The network between the data link switches is TCP/IP. DLSw can be adapted to support other data links and WANs.

The testing began with pairs of DLSw products establishing TCP connections and performing DLSw capabilities exchange. Once these connections were established between a given pair of DLSw products, the DLSw implementers tried out a variety of end station connection scenarios, including: SNA type 2.0 and 2.1 nodes on token-ring to a host, SDLC-attached end stations to a host, and NetBIOS end stations on token-ring to each other. In addition, the DLSw vendors created congestion scenarios to test new DLSw flow control procedures, and tried configurations where each DLSw product had multiple DLSw partners.

Each vendor tested with every other vendor in a round-robin style. The DLSw Version 1 Interoperability Test was successful, promoting interaction among developers of key industry DLSw implementations. Information, tips and techniques were exchanged with a common goal of multivendor DLSw connectivity.

"Bay Networks was pleased to act as host for this DLSw interoperability test," said David Berman, director of IBM networking products at Bay Networks. "The number of vendors here, as well as those with DLSw still under development, makes it clear that DLSw is truly a multivendor standard."

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The APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) was held August 21-24, 1995 in Raleigh, NC at the North Raleigh Hilton. The AIW facilitates fully interoperable, high quality APPN products from a wide range of vendors This was a working meeting with general sessions and several Special Interest Groups (SIG) and Birds of a Feather Sessions (BOF). The following events occurred at AIW8, reinforcing APPN as an open technology that's widely implemented:

Border Node:

IBM is opening the Border Node architecture through the AIW by making the specifications available to members. Version 1 of the Border Node specification was made available to SIG participants, and use of IBM patents is available according to AIW guidelines.

Discovery:

IBM distributed and reviewed the Discovery specifications during AIW8. Discovery is a dynamic LAN address resolution mechanism that helps eliminate partner node definitions.

APPN/ATM Interworking:

IBM submitted a document outlining APPN for native ATM access. APPN/ATM Internetworking is based on the HPR architecture.

APPN Reference SIG:

Wall Data and Insession submitted a proposal for technical refinements to the APPN Directory Services to make APPN even easier to use. The SIG is actively considering and refining the proposal.

Data Link Switching Related Interest Group (DLSw RIG):

The AIW DLSw version 2 and version 1 MIB work continued.

Other Items of Interest:

Steve Joyce, VP at Ganymede Software, presented 'Network Performance Benchmarking'.

Jim Fletcher, Senior Technical Staff Member at IBM, presented 'SNA to APPN Migration'.

SIG work continued on APPN and HPR MIBs.

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The APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) was held May 1 - May 4, 1995 in San Jose, CA at the Red Lion Hotel. The AIW is designed to facilitate fully interoperable, high quality APPN products from a wide variety of vendors. This AIW was a working meeting with general sessions. Increasing APPN popularity has recently fueled AIW growth with the workshop expanding to 4 days to meet the needs of its 41 member companies. The following is a list of news events that occurred at AIW7 and each show that APPN is an open technology that's widely implemented:

General Sessions:

Consultant Perspective - Tom Routt analyzed why customers need ATM, how to migrate to ATM and prospects for an ATM control point standard.

Implementation Experience - Cisco presented its experience implementing APPN using source code from IBM and Data Connection Ltd.

Industry Perspective - 3Com gave their viewpoint on the prospects for APPN growth.

High Performance Routing (HPR):

HPR reached "final approval" status in the AIW which opens the way for shipment of HPR in non-IBM products. HPR products from IBM will begin rolling out this summer.

APPN/ATM Interworking:

IBM reviewed their APPN/ATM requirements, plans and directions. An ATM BOF was also held to outline detailed goals and technical requirements for APPN/ATM internetworking.

Boundary Access Node (BAN):

IBM disclosed details of its recent announcement on BAN. BAN lets remote internetworking devices attach directly to NCP over frame relay, through an innovative use of the RFC 1490 standard. BAN is another milestone extending IBM's track record for continous leadership in SNA internetworking. BAN eliminates the need to front-end NCP with a router thus providing a less expensive solution than alternatives such as DLSw and RSRB.

SNMP Over SNA:

IBM proposed SNMP over SNA, a new method to carry Simple Network Management Protocol over SNA networks. SNMP/SNA sustains IBM's leadership in SNA internetworking. It eliminates the need for a parallel IP network in order to manage an APPN network from an industry platform of choice.

Extended Border Node:

A new special interest group was formed to approve a specification of Extended Border Node, a key piece of IBM technology that enables the construction of large APPN internetworks composed of many interconnected APPN networks. IBM is opening the Extended Border Node architecture through the AIW.

Data Link Switching Related Interest Group (DLSw RIG):

The AIW DLSw standard version 1 (Data Link Switching Switch-to-Switch Protocol) has now been submitted to the IETF as informational RFC 1795. The DLSw RIG started work on AIW DLSw version 2 and significant progress was made on the version 1 MIB work.

Other Items of Interest:

The APPN Reference SIG announced accepted enhancements to the APPN architecture. IBM product developers and APPN architecture team members shared their expertise with newer APPN implementers.

New SIGs were formed for the APPN and HPR MIBs. AIW member companies chose to conduct this work at the AIW, instead of the IETF.

IBM presented 'Multiprotocol Transport Networking', the AnyNet technology in the 2217 Multiprotocol Concentrator.

AIW Members

Adv. Computer Comm., Applied Computer Tech., Ascom Timeplex, Attachmate, Axis Communications AB, Bay Networks, BBN Systems and Tech., Cabletron Systems, CIMI Corp., Cisco Systems, CrossComm Corp., Data Connection Ltd., DataCom Systems, Inc., Digital Comm. Assoc. Inc., Digital Equipment Corp., Digital Techology, Eicon Techology, Harris-Adacom, Hewlett Packard, Hypercom, IBM Corp., InSession (Australia), McData Corp., Memorex-Telex Corp., Metaplex Inc., Netlink Inc., Northern Telecom, OpenConnect Systems, Proteon Corp., RADLINX Ltd., Robin Callender, Robin Layland, Routerware, Sych Research, Systems & Comm. Sciences, Systems Strategies/Apertus, Tandem Computers, Teubner and Assoc., Inc., Wall Data, Inc., Wandal & Goltermann Tech., and 3Com.

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The APPN Multivendor Connectivity Test was held February 27 - March 2, 1995 in Research Triangle Park, N.C. at IBM. This connectivity test was a meeting of multiple vendors to test their open APPN implementations and ensure the interoperability of APPN networks. Apertus, Attachmate, Bay Networks, Cabletron, Cisco, Data Connection Limited, IBM, Insession, Memorex Telex and Wall Data were participants testing their APPN implementations. This was the second vendor test not directly tied to an industry conference.

The testing consisted of various scenarios beginning with network node (NN) connectivity over a token-ring, ethernet and/or frame relay network. Then, end nodes (EN) and low entry networking (LEN) nodes were quickly added to the network and intermediate traffic was routed. Then, each adjacent NN was alternated to ensure compatibility among each vendors' NN and EN implementation. In addition, the following advanced APPN connections and features were exercised: AS/400 and VTAM Border Node, Central Directory Client/Server, CP-CP establishment reactivation, Connection Network, Dependent LU Requester/Server, Host takeover and parallel links. Thus, there were over 200 APPN test scenarios per vendor and over 2000 total scenarios tested.

IBM's NN implementations were tested on the 3174, 3746, 6611, AIX SNA Server, AS/400, CM/2 and VTAM. Bay Networks, Cabletron, Cisco, Data Connection Limited and Memorex Telex also tested their NN implementations.

The APPN Multivendor Connectivity Test was very successful, promoting interaction among developers of key industry APPN implementations. APPN is an open, industry standard helping customers to position their networks for tomorrow's emerging technologies.

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The next APPN Multivendor Connectivity Test will be held February 27 - March 2, 1995 in Research Triangle Park, N.C. at the IBM Test Lab. This connectivity test will enable multiple vendors to test their open APPN implementations and help ensure the interoperability of APPN networks. Some of the participants will include Bay Networks, Cabletron, Cisco Systems, IBM and Wall Data. Highlights from various testing scenarios will include APPN over Frame Relay and Dependent LU Requester/Server implementations.

The APPN Multivendor Connectivity Test is an effective mechanism for interaction among developers of key industry APPN implementations. Information, tips and techniques will be exchanged with a common goal of multivendor APPN connectivity.

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Today, the Data Link Switching (DLSw) related interest group (RIG) of the APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW), reached final approval on Version 1 of its DLSw specification. DLSw is a method for reliably transporting SNA and NetBIOS traffic over TCP/IP. The new specification details functional enhancements to DLSw and defines an industry standard for the interoperability of DLSw products. The AIW is an industry-wide consortium of networking vendors that develops APPN and SNA-related standards, and facilitates interoperable products.

Formed in the summer of 1993, the DLSw RIG has involved the efforts of more than a dozen networking vendors in defining enhancements to the DLSw switch-to-switch protocol. This protocol was developed and originally documented by IBM in Request For Comments (RFC) 1434. Louise Herndon- Wells, chair of the DLSw RIG, said "It is remarkable that so many SNA internetworking vendors have rallied around DLSw to serve customers with interoperble products."

Functional enhancements defined in the Version 1 DLSw standard include the following:

• Improvements for both SNA and NetBIOS connections, allowing for more robust handling of network searches and connection setup.
• A new 'Capabilities Exchange' algorithm to learn about partner nodes, providing improved network management, and additional WAN traffic filtering, and allowing vendor-specific DLSw features.
• A new circuit-pacing scheme that allows DLSw products to control the rate of data flow from another DLSw product on an end-station to end- station basis.
• An optional circuit-priority scheme that can favor traffic from some end-stations over traffic from others.

Members of the AIW's DLSw related interest group are currently working on a standard Management Information Base (MIB), to provide SNMP-based management stations the capability to monitor and control DLSw operation in a consistent way across multiple vendors' DLSw products. This MIB work will be continued under the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and is expected to complete in June of 1995.

The AIW's Version 1 DLSw standard is now available electronically on the Internet in both ASCII text and PostScript formats. To obtain this document, use anonymous FTP to the host "ftp.software.ibm.com" to retrieve the file "dlsw_v1.txt", "dlsw_v1.psbin", or "dlsw_v1.exe" from directory "/aiw/dlsw".

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The APPN Implementers Workshop (AIW) was held October 11 - October 13, 1994 in Raleigh, NC at the Radisson Plaza Hotel. The AIW is designed to facilitate fully interoperable, high quality APPN products from a wide variety of vendors. This AIW was a working meeting with general sessions and a special SNA 20th Anniversary celebration. There were also several SIG and BOF sessions. The following is a list of news events that occurred at AIW6, each showing that the APPN as an open, multivendor architecture:

SNA 20th Anniversary Celebration:

A short ceremony was held to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of SNA, which was first introduced in September of 1974. IBM Fellow, Dr. James P. Gray was emcee as a group of distinguished veteran SNA developers and executives discussed the past, present and future of SNA. The IBM developers and executives included:

• Bill Bernstein, Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM Networking
• Len Felton, V. P. of Quality and General Development, IBM Networking
• Verlin Hoberecht, Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM Networking
• Paul Lindfors, retired IBM Director
• Rick McGee, Director of Network Controllers, IBM Networking
• Ed Sussenguth, retired IBM Fellow

General Sessions:

United Parcel Service (UPS) - Mike Zavodsky spoke about UPS's use of APPN and future SNA network plans in their large and rapidly growing network.

Wellfleet Communications - Paul Phillips presented experiences with implementing APPN Network Node capabilities for Wellfleet's family of multiprotocol routers. Wellfleet used source code from Data Connection, Ltd. As a result, Wellfleet's successful APPN implementation illustrates openness of APPN.

High Performance Routing (HPR):

HPR reached "approved pages" status in the AIW. "Closed Pages" approval is expected April 1995, which will make HPR architecture of record that APPN technology licensees can implement. A discussion of SNMP management for HPR also took place.

Data Link Switching Related Interest Group (DLSw RIG):

The AIW DLSw standard reached "approved direction" through e-mail consensus and is expected to reach another level of approval this month.

APPN-Over-ATM Birds of a Feather Session (BOF):

The APPN-Over-ATM BOF met for the first time to begin work on the interrelation and synergy between AIW/APPN participants and the ATM Forum. This new BOF shows APPN's use of emerging technologies and growing architecture.

Border Node Birds of a Feather Session (BOF):

The Border Node BOF met for the first time to begin work on collecting requirements and determining schedules for future development.

Other Items of Interest:

• The APPN Reference SIG announced increased participation with multiple vendors.
• Christine Martin from Data Connection Ltd. presented 'DCL's Experience Implementing Dependent LU Requester'.
• George Grover from IBM Research presented 'Wireless Networking with HPR'.

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The APPN Multivendor Connectivity Test was held June 21 - June 24, 1994 in Research Triangle Park, N.C. at the IBM Test Lab. This connectivity test was a meeting of multiple vendors to test their open APPN implementations and help ensure the interoperability of APPN networks. 3COM, Attachmate, Cabletron, Data Connection Limited, IBM, Insession, Northern Telecom, Systems Strategies, Inc., WallData, and Wellfleet Communications were participants testing their APPN implementations. This was the first test meeting of vendors not directly tied to an industry conference.

The testing consisted of various scenarios beginning with Network Node (NN) connectivity into a base network. End Nodes (EN) were quickly added to the network and intermediate traffic was routed. Then, each adjacent NN was alternated to ensure compatibility among each vendors' NN implementation. In addition, the following advanced APPN connections and features were exercised: Connection Network, APPN Multiple Network Connectivity (Border Node), Dependent LU Requester/Server, and APPN network management via IBM's NetView Focal Point. Thus, there were over 150 APPN combinations tested.

IBM's NN implementations were tested on the 3174, 6611, AIX SNA Server, AS/400, CM/2 and VTAM. 3Com, Cabletron, Data Connection Limited, Northern Telecom and Wellfleet also tested their NN implementations.

The APPN Multivendor Connectivity Test was very successful, promoting interaction among developers of key industry APPN implementations. Information, tips and techniques were exchanged with a common goal of multivendor APPN connectivity.

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