Santa Clara, California-based 3Com Corp has furthered its commitment to SNA and Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking by announcing what it claims is the first multiprotocol router incorporating Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking Dependent Logical Unit Requester, or APPN DLUR, in a multiprotocol routing environment. With the new offering, 3Com said it is providing the functionality to enable users to move forward with IBM Corp’s strategic direction of migrating legacy SNA sub-area networks toward Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking. Until now, said 3Com, the protocol has been limited to supporting only the latest generation of client-server SNA applications, which have been based on Advanced Program-to-Program Communication and LU 6.2. However, DLUR – developed through the APPN Implementer’s Workshop – provides the capability for Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking to support legacy SNA 3270 applications, and an industry standard offering for such networks to carry dependent Logical Unit traffic natively between IBM mainframes and peripheral devices such as printers, terminals, point-of-sale devices, and automatic teller machines. Through its implementation of DLUR in the NETBuilder II product line, the company now claims to offer two unique capabilities to the internetworking industry: as the only vendor to provide downstream Physical Unit support, the company said it provides the ability for SNA devices of all types to be connected to the Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking network and access legacy applications without the need for equipment upgrades and reconfiguration; and as the only implementation of APPN DLUR in a multiprotocol router, 3Com claims that it offers the industry’s only offering for integrating legacy SNA devices and applications into a single physical network supporting both native SNA and native non-SNA protocols. The feature is available now on software release 8.2 of its NETBuilder II range.
