International Business Machines Corporation

Raymond Edward Ward

Arthur James Stagg

Lynn Douglas Long

Louis Frank Menditto

Linda Barrett

David Anthony Herr

Wesley McMillan Devine

John Andrew Aiken, Jr

Mark William McClintock

Masashi Edward Miyake

Methods, systems and computer program products provide assignment of ports for connections originated by multiple application instances executing on different data processing systems utilizing a common network address. An indication of available ports for the common network address is provided to each of the different data processing systems executing the multiple application instances. A port identified as available is selected as a port for a connection utilizing the common network address.

Methods, systems and computer program products for port assignments of multiple application instances using the same source IP address

A multi-path channel interface for computer input-output systems includes the ability to define and activate unbalanced groups of unidirectional communications sub-channels for a user application. Protocol independent exchange identifications permit not only unbalanced transmission groups but also allow user-controlled extensions for negotiating the values of transmission parameters at the time the transmission group is activated. When error correcting re-transmissions force the re-segmenting of data blocks, second level sub-segment indexing assure the proper order of delivery of the various segments and sub-segments. The exchange identifications include an identification of the user protocol being supported and thus permit interfacing with any user protocol.

Channel interface with data segmentation and re-segementation

Dynamic multipath channel interface for input/output channels

Multi-path channel (MPC) interface with user transparent, unbalanced,

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Durham, NC, United States of America

Raymond Edward Ward