Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) is the network-layer protocol in the IPX/SPX protocol suite. IPX is derived from Xerox Network Systems' IDP. It also has the ability to act as a transport layer protocol.
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and the Internet Protocol (IP). Early versions of this networking model were known as the Department of Defense (DoD) model because the research and development were funded by the United States Department of Defense through DARPA.
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger geographic distance, but also generally involves leased telecommunication circuits.
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe explained the name 3Com was a contraction of "Computer Communication Compatibility", with its focus on Ethernet technology that he had co-invented, which enabled the networking of computers.
Xerox Network Systems (XNS) is a computer networking protocol suite developed by Xerox within the Xerox Network Systems Architecture. It provided general purpose network communications, internetwork routing and packet delivery, and higher level functions such as a reliable stream, and remote procedure calls. XNS predated and influenced the development of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) networking model, and was very influential in local area networking designs during the 1980s.
Systems Network Architecture (SNA) is IBM's proprietary networking architecture, created in 1974. It is a complete protocol stack for interconnecting computers and their resources. SNA describes formats and protocols but, in itself, is not a piece of software. The implementation of SNA takes the form of various communications packages, most notably Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM), the mainframe software package for SNA communications.
NetBIOS is an acronym for Network Basic Input/Output System. It provides services related to the session layer of the OSI model allowing applications on separate computers to communicate over a local area network. As strictly an API, NetBIOS is not a networking protocol. Operating systems of the 1980s ran NetBIOS over IEEE 802.2 and IPX/SPX using the NetBIOS Frames (NBF) and NetBIOS over IPX/SPX (NBX) protocols, respectively. In modern networks, NetBIOS normally runs over TCP/IP via the NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NBT) protocol. NetBIOS is also used for identifying system names in TCP/IP (Windows).
Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM) is the IBM subsystem that implements Systems Network Architecture (SNA) for mainframe environments. VTAM provides an application programming interface (API) for communication applications, and controls communication equipment such as adapters and controllers. In modern terminology, VTAM provides a communication stack and device drivers.
The IBM RT PC is a family of workstation computers from IBM introduced in 1986. These were the first commercial computers from IBM that were based on a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture. The RT PC uses IBM's proprietary ROMP microprocessor, which commercialized technologies pioneered by IBM Research's 801 experimental minicomputer. The RT PC runs three operating systems: AIX, the Academic Operating System (AOS), and Pick.
Interlink Computer Sciences, Inc., of Fremont, California, was a developer of hardware and software that allowed IBM mainframe computers running the MVS operating system to be connected to non-IBM networks.
Remote job entry, or Remote Batch, is the procedure for sending requests for non-interactive data processing tasks (jobs) to mainframe computers from remote workstations, and by extension the process of receiving the output from such jobs at a remote workstation.
A 3270 Emulator is a terminal emulator that duplicates the functions of an IBM 3270 mainframe computer terminal on a computer, usually a PC or similar microcomputer.
In computing, Advanced Program to Program Communication or APPC is a protocol which computer programs can use to communicate over a network. APPC is at the application layer in the OSI model, it enables communications between programs on different computers, from portables and workstations to midrange and host computers. APPC is defined as VTAM LU 6.2
Ultra Network Technologies was a networking company. It offered high-speed network products for the scientific computing market as well as some commercial companies. It was founded in 1986 by James N. Perdue, Drew Berding, and Wes Meador to provide higher speed connectivity and networking for supercomputers and their peripherals and workstations. At the time, the only other companies offering high speed networking and connectivity for the supercomputer and high-end workstation market was Network Systems Corporation (NSC) and Computer Network Technology Corporation (CNT). They both offered 50 megabytes per second (MB/s) bandwidth between controllers but at that time, their architecture was not implemented using standard networking protocols and their applications were generally focused on supporting connectivity at high speed between large mainframes and peripherals, often only implementing only point-to-point connections. Ethernet was available in 1986 and was used by most computer centers for general networking purposes. Its bandwidth was not high enough to manage the high data rate required by the 100 MB/s supercomputer channels and 4 MB/s VMEbus channels on workstations.
Douglas Earl Comer is a professor of computer science at Purdue University, where he teaches courses on operating systems and computer networks. He has written numerous research papers and textbooks, and currently heads several networking research projects. He has been involved in TCP/IP and internetworking since the late 1970s, and is an internationally recognized authority. He designed and implemented X25NET and Cypress networks, and the Xinu operating system. He is director of the Internetworking Research Group at Purdue, editor of Software - Practice and Experience, and a former member of the Internet Architecture Board. Comer completed the original version of Xinu in 1979. Since then, Xinu has been expanded and ported to a wide variety of platforms, including: IBM PC, Macintosh, Digital Equipment Corporation VAX and DECstation 3100, Sun Microsystems Sun-2, Sun-3 and SPARCstations, and Intel Pentium. It has been used as the basis for many research projects. Furthermore, Xinu has been used as an embedded system in products by companies such as Motorola, Mitsubishi, Hewlett-Packard, and Lexmark.
The IBM 3745 is the latest and last of a 37xx family of communications controllers for the IBM mainframe environment. As of mid-2009 there were an estimated 7,000+ of the larger 3745 models still in active production status, down from 20,000 or more in 2007. The 3745 and associated 3746 models were once heavily used within financial, insurance and retail industries as well as within government agencies globally. However, today most organizations have migrated away from the use of 3745s. IBM's Enterprise Extender and the Communication Controller for Linux on System z (CCL) have largely displaced the older 3745s. IBM announced in September 2002 that it would no longer manufacture new 3745s, but IBM continues to support the hardware by providing worldwide maintenance service, by providing microcode releases and by supporting the associated software including NCP and the virtual telecommunications access method (VTAM). IBM has announced end-of-service dates for Japan, Europe and the Middle East, but has not yet announced end-of-service for the Americas and parts of Asia.
BITNET was a co-operative U.S. university computer network founded in 1981 by Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University. The first network link was between CUNY and Yale.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to computing:
HYPERchannel, sometimes rendered Hyperchannel, was a local area networking system for mainframe computers, especially supercomputers, introduced by Network Systems Corporation in the 1970s. It ran at the then-fast speed of 50 Mbits/second, performance that would not be matched by commodity hardware until the introduction of Fast Ethernet in 1995. HYPERchannel ran over very thick coax cable or fibre optic extensions and required adaptor hardware the size of a minicomputer. The networking protocol was entirely proprietary. Solutions for Control Data, IBM and Cray computers were their primary products, but a wide variety of support emerged in the 1980s, including DEC VAX and similar superminicomputers.
The Sniffer was a computer network packet and protocol analyzer developed and first sold in 1986 by Network General Corporation of Mountain View, CA. By 1994 the Sniffer had become the market leader in high-end protocol analyzers. According to SEC 10-K filings and corporate annual reports, between 1986 and March 1997 about $933M worth of Sniffers and related products and services had been sold as tools for network managers and developers.
