San Jose, California-based Cisco Systems Inc has introduced a series of hardware and software systems to provide IBM Corp mainframe-oriented remote branch offices with access to corporate internetworks. First up are products said to enable remote branch offices in IBM installations to access SNA networks via Frame Relay. The Cisco Frame Relay Access Device is a serial-only systemwhich, says Cisco, is tailored specifically for sites migrating from SDLC to Frame Relay networks. It come in two models, both of which include two serial ports, 2Mb of Flash electrically programmable ROM and 2Mb of system dynamic RAM. Via software, the 2501F can be upgraded to support Ethernet routing, while the 2502CF can be software-upgraded to support Token Ring routing. The 2501F lists for $2,245, with the 2502CF coming in at $2,870; both are available now. In addition, the company has added two software features to its Internetworking Operating System. The enhancements comprise the addition of SNA support for Request For Comment 1490, the IETF standard for direct encapsulation of multiple protocols over Frame Relay networks, and support for IBM’s Qualified Logical Link Control protocol, used by SNA devices to connect over an X.25 network. The standard support will be a no-extra cost feature in all operating system feature sets for the Cisco 2500 and 4000 series router families, as well as in its packet switching option for the 7000 family and AGS+ routers, says the company. Cisco has also introduced its Native Client Architecture said to extend Internetworking Operating System to the desktop by providing access to to SNA applications through the TCP/IP protocol. Native Client Architecture will be implemented as an option in third party SNA host access software products, Cisco is promising.
Physical unit
Kirkland, Washington-based Wall Data Inc announced last week that it will be the first SNA client software vendor to support the architecture. Cisco is also introducing Downstream Physical Unit concentration, a software feature said to enable routers to handle the physical unit concentration functions normally performed by SNA-local area network gateways. This will be also be a standard feature at no extra cost, in the Enterprise Internetworking Operating System set on the 2500 and 4000 router series, the AccessPro PC Card, and in the bridging software option on the 7000 and AGS+ router ranges. On the Bi-sync side, Cisco is adding the data-link protocol to its family of internetwork routers. This feature will enable users to consolidate binary synchronous traffic with local area network or SDLC traffic and will be focussed on the banking industry, which uses binary synchronous communications extensively to transmit data from remote automatic teller machines to central mainframes, says Cisco. Banks will be able to dispense with dedicated facilities and use their existing internetworks for automatic teller machine-to-mainframe communication. Cisco says it will begin field trials of the binary synchronous feature this month, with full availability scheduled for the first half of 1995.
