We provide a family of portable products called SNAPS (SNA Portable Software). The SNAPS products are written in C, and implement SNA and related communications architectures in a fashion which is independent of any particular operating system or hardware architecture.
The SNAPS products are typically licensed by
- router, hub and switch vendors such as Cisco and Nortel, who port (or subcontract Data Connection to port) them to their proprietary environments
- software vendors such as Attachmate and Microsoft who use our technology in their PC-to-enterprise communications products.
See two examples of how SNAP APPN is used (by Nortel and Cisco).
The most important members of the SNAPS SNA product family are as follows.
- SNAP APPN is an SNA node which can act as
- a traditional (i.e pre-APPN) Low Entry Networking (LEN) node
- an APPN End Node
- an APPN Network Node
- an APPN Branch Network Node.
- SNAP-LINK implements the Synchronous Data Link Control (SDLC) protocol, and can operate either as a free-standing SDLC product or "underneath" SNAP APPN.
- SNAP-LLC2 implements the Logical Link Control Type 2 (LLC2) protocol as required to carry SNA or APPN over Token Ring, Ethernet, FDDI or Frame Relay networks, and can operate either as a free-standing LLC2 product or "underneath" SNAP APPN.
- SNAP-DLSw implements the Data Link Switch (DLSw) Protocols as defined in RFC1434, RFC1795 and RFC2166. These protocols allow SNA, APPN and NetBIOS traffic to be transported over an IP network.
- SNAP-IPDLC implements the DLC layer of the Enterprise Extender (HPR/IP) protocols defined by SNA APPN option set 2009. This is a "light and fast" DLC layer that allows SNAP APPN to communicate with other SNA nodes over an IP network. See our SNA/IP white paper for more information on DLSw and Enterprise Extender.