Inventors:
Kathryn H. Britton - Chapel Hill NC
Tein-Yaw Chung - Chung-Li, TW
Willibald Doeringer - Langnau, CH
Harold D. Dykeman - Dietikon, CH
Allan K. Edwards - Raleigh NC
Johny Mathew - Cary NC
Diane P. Pozefsky - Chapel Hill NC
Soumitra Sarkar - Cary NC
Roger D. Turner - Raleigh NC
Assignee:
International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY
International Classification:
H04L 1266, H04L 2906
Abstract:
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.