In today's corporate world, information, in the form of data is located across the entire enterprise, from desktop to mainframe. The need to share this information in a distributed heterogeneous environment is crucial to the success of the mission critical-business applications. In this environment, the rich data content of the mainframe, which commonly stores 70% of corporate America's data, plays an ever-increasing roll. The protocol of choice to achieve this interoperability is TCP/IP.
Mainframe based TCP/IP protocol stacks have become common place. Approximately 65% of installed mainframes support TCP/IP, in one form or another. Mainframe based TCP/IP has two primary uses, access to legacy data and file transfer. In a typical implementation, access to legacy data is accomplished via a telnet service called TN3270E. In effect, TN3270E is a standard 3270 screen protocol within the headers and trailers that make up the telnet packet. The TCP/IP stacks that reside in the sending (desktop) and receiving (mainframe) platforms handle the necessary handshaking and verification to guarantee successful transmission. The packet is then transferred to the SNA application (i.e. CICS) via what is known as a socket interface. FTP is similar in that the sending and receiving platforms invoke the TCP/IP protocol to insure the integrity of the data was not lost during transmission.
The physical connection between the mainframe channel and the connecting topology is accomplished via a device commonly known as an Interconnect Controller. These devices arbitrate the differences between the topology for the WAN/LAN (ATM, Ethernet, etc.) and the mainframe channel. They operate at the Physical and Link layers of the ISO model and therefore are protocol independent of the upper level protocols.
Bus-Tech offers two channel-attached solutions:
- Mainframe Appliance for Networking - is a high-performance TCP/IP controller based on RedHat Linux and provides ESCON to Gigabit (10/100/1000) Ethernet connectivity. It uses Linux's Virtual Network Controller for remote administration capabilities to provide easy administration and configuration over the Ethernet network.
- The NetShuttle for Microsoft Host Integration Server runs Microsoft's Windows 2000 Server and includes Microsoft's Host Integration Server 2000 to provide support for 3270, TN3270, and LU6.2 traffic. Bus-Tech's TCP/IP Direct Connect technology is included to allow NetShuttle to concurrently operate as a "channel-attached" IP router. Multi-Path Channel Plus (MPC+) software can be added to provide the highest possible throughput for demanding IP applications.
