International Business Machines Corporation

Johny Mathew

Soumitra Sarkar

Kathryn Heninger Britton

Diane Phylis Pozefsky

Willibald A Doeringer

Allan K Edwards

Roger D Turner

Harold D Dykeman

Tein-Yaw David Chung

James P Gray

Joshua S Auerbach

Douglas H Dykeman

John H Wilson

Raymond F Bird

Yue T Yeung

Winston W Chung

Tein-Yaw D Chung

Winston W-K Chung

A multiprotocol transport network (MPTN) gateway provides transparent interconnection of two or more SPTNs running different transport layer protocols to form an integrated heterogeneous MPTN. The MPTN gateway of the present invention has no dependencies on the particular transport protocols running on the SPTNs being interconnected as it utilizes a common transport provider (a Gateway Services Protocol Boundary (GSPB)) between the SPTN transport protocols and the gateway components. The MPTN gateway supports connections between end systems across multiple intermediate networks. The MPTN gateway provides automatic routing based on dynamic participation in the routing protocols of the interconnected SPTNs so that any number of gateways may be interconnected and in any topology desired. As the MPTN gateway has a general architecture and acquires routing information automatically, it supports not only other MPTN nodes and gateways but also non-MPTN nodes and gateways.

General transport layer gateway for heterogeneous networks

The present invention is a general solution to the problem address incompatibility between application programs and transport services. The invention may be embodied in a method for mapping the application program address (program address) to the transport services address (transport Provider address). According to the method, a program address is registered in the network so that it becomes available to other programs that understand the address, even if they are running over a transport protocol that does not understand the address format. When a request is made that a connection be established between a program and a program partner or that a datagram be sent therebetween, the program address is mapped to the transport Provider address (if necessary). The program address is then conveyed to the program partner so that it knows who it is talking to.

Protocol selection and address resolution for programs running in

A Transport Layer Protocol Boundary (TLPB) architecture is described which will permit an application program to run over a non-native transport protocol without first generating a protocol compensation package tailored to the transport protocols assumed by the program's application programming interface and by the available transport provider. All transport functions required by the program are converted to standardized or TLPB representations. When a connection between the first application program and a second remote application is requested, the individual required TLPB transport functions are compared to corresponding functions supported by the transport provider. Compensations are invoked only where there is a mismatch. The node on which the remote application program runs is informed of the compensations so that necessary de-compensation operations can be performed before the data is delivered to the remote application program.

Compensation for mismatched transport protocols in a data communications

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Chapel Hill, NC, United States of America

Johny Mathew