International Business Machines Corporation

Joseph Michael Abler

Francis Edward Noel, Jr

Lorrie Ann Tomek

William Gavin Holland

William Woollcott Ellington, Jr

A method and apparatus for multi-protocol LAN support, which is applicable to Ethernet, Token-Ring, and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocols. The LAN support is located at a workstation and provides for automatic determination of the LAN protocol type and speed. A common adapter card is provided for use in the workstation to interface the workstation to any of the LANs of interest. A four-step sequential process is taught for determining the protocol type and speed.

Dynamic detection of LAN network protocol

A queued memory switch includes separate devices that switch received data to the outputs of the queued memory switch. Data is received by a first device (the master) and a second device (the slave) at a series of reception times. The slave sends information to the master indicating whether data directed to an output port was received by the slave at each of the reception times. The master stores the information from the slave with information indicating whether data directed to the same output port was received by the master at each of the reception times. The information indicates the order in which the master and slave received their respective data. The indication can be used to transmit the data from master and the slave in the order in which the data was received by the master and the slave. Related methods, systems, and computer program products are also disclosed.

Methods, switches, systems, and computer program products for fair transmission of data received at multiple inputs in the order received in a queued memory switch

A programmable multispeed communication apparatus includes a plurality of identical media access control (MAC) units for use with a programmable data processing system. The MAC units when multiplexed and connected to a communication media achieve a transmission speed n&middot;s where n is the number of MAC units and s is the speed of the individual MACs. If one or more but not all of the MAC units fail, the apparatus will operate in degraded mode with the remaining active MAC units. User frames are sequentially numbered, partitioned into sequentially numbered partitions which are assigned to one or more MAC's. Each of the partitions includes a prefix which includes the sequential frame number, the sequential partition number and an indicator for distinguishing the last partition of a frame from the other partitions of that frame.

Apparatus including a scalable multiprotocol communications adapter using modular components and a method for transmitting data frames via scalable multiprotocol communication adapters

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Raleigh, NC, United States of America

Joseph Michael Abler