Cray Communications Ltd, the wholly-owned unit of Newbury, Berkshire-based Cray Electronics Plc, has released a router-independent Systems Network Architecture processor. The SNA Access Processor enables existing SNA devices to communicate transparently over routed local network-wide area network backbones and enables existing wide area communications links to be shared between SNA and local network-to-local network traffic, says the company. According to Cray, instead of using SDLC encapsulation, the product uses an independent RISC-based processor to process SNA data into fully routable TCP/IP or OSI traffic. It reportedly handles Token Ring, Ethernet and a variety of SDLC interfaces, and is available in two variants, handling eight and 100 SNA PU-to-PU connections respectively. No prices released.
