International Business Machines Corporation

C Eric Williford

Jeffrey James Lynch

Charles Pierre Rheinart

Vicki Gentry Horton

James Harold Ragsdale

George Allen Deaton, Jr

R John Potok

David James Franse

An improvement in the Open Systems Interconnection model in which Service Access Points can be established directly between peer entities in the same layer of a protocol stack. This direct seamless peer-to-peer communication is vastly superior to the use of a higher level relay function to set up and manage the communication path. In particular, setup messages are exchanged between the peer entities and a higher layer to create the Service Access Point between the peer entities. The setup and management capabilities are contained in each of the peer entities and hence no relay function is required after the peer Service Access Point, substantially speeding up the communication and reducing the management overhead.

Seamless peer-to-peer communications in a layered communications

Growing community of inventors

Research Triangle Park, NC, United States of America

C Eric Williford