IBM Systems Network Architecture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 the protocol and is, in itself, not actually a program. The implementation of SNA takes the form of various communications packages, most notably VTAM which is the mainframe package for SNA communications. SNA is still used extensively in banks and other financial transaction networks, as well as in many government agencies. While IBM is still providing support for SNA, one of the primary pieces of hardware, the 3745/3746 communications controller has been withdrawn from marketing by the IBM Corporation. However, there are an estimated 20,000 of these controllers installed and IBM continues to provide hardware maintenance service and micro code features to support users. A robust market of smaller companies continues to provide the 3745/3746, features, parts and service. The VTAM telecommunications access method is also supported by IBM, as is the IBM Network Control Program (NCP) required by the 3745/3746 controllers.

Contents

[edit] Objectives of SNA

IBM in the mid-1970s saw itself mainly as a hardware vendor and hence all its innovations in that period aimed to increase hardware sales. SNA's objective was to reduce the costs of operating large numbers of terminals and thus induce customers to develop or expand interactive terminal based-systems as opposed to batch systems. An expansion of interactive terminal based-systems would increase sales of terminals and more importantly of mainframe computers and peripherals - partly because of the simple increase in the volume of work done by the systems and partly because interactive processing requires more computing power per transaction than batch processing.

Hence SNA aimed to reduce the main non-computer costs and other difficulties in operating large networks using earlier communications protocols. The difficulties included:

  • A communications line could not be shared by terminals whose users wished to use different types of application, for example one which ran under the control of CICS and another which ran under TSO.
  • Often a communications line could not be shared by terminals of different types, because they used different "dialects" of the existing communications protocols. The main reason was that up to the early 1970s computer components were so expensive and bulky that it was not feasible to include flexible, general-purpose communications interface cards in terminals, so every type of terminal had a hard-wired communications card which was designed to support only the operation of that terminal without considering compatibility with other terminals on the same line.
  • The protocols which the primitive communications cards could handle were not very efficient, so each communications line spent less of its time actually transmitting data than modern lines do.
  • Telecommunications lines at the time were of much lower quality than today's. For example it was almost impossible to run a dial-up line at more than 300 bits per second because the error rate became overwhelming, but today 56,000 bits per second is normal on dial-up lines; and in the early 1970s few leased lines were run at more than 2400 bits per second (these low speeds are a consequence of Shannon's Law in a relatively low-technology environment). Telecommunications companies had little incentive to improve line quality or reduce costs, because at the time they were mostly monopolies and often state-owned.

As a result running a large number of terminals required a lot more communications lines than the same number would require today, especially if there were different types of terminals or users wanted to use different types of application (.e.g. under CICS or TSO) from the same location. In purely financial terms SNA's objectives were to increase customers' spending on terminal-based systems and at the same time to increase IBM's share of that spending, mainly at the expense of the telecommunications companies.

SNA also aimed to overcome a limitation of the architecture which IBM's System/370 mainframes inherited from System/360. Each CPU could connect to at most 16 "channels" (devices which acted as controllers for peripherals such as tape and disk drives, printers, card-readers) and each channel could handle up to 16 peripherals - i.e. there was maximum of 256 peripherals per CPU. But before SNA each communications line counted as a separate peripheral, which severely limited the number of terminals with which even the most powerful mainframe could communicate.

[edit] Principal components and technologies

Improvements in computer component technology made it feasible to build terminals that included more powerful communications cards which could operate a single standard communications protocol rather than a very stripped-down protocol which suited only a specific type of terminal. As a result several multi-layer communications protocols were proposed in the 1970s, of which the most important were IBM's SNA and ISO's X.25.

The best-known elements of SNA were:

  • 3705 communications processors running IBM Network Control Program (NCP) performed two main functions:
    • They acted rather like modern routers - fowarding data packages correctly to the next node, which might be a mainframe, a terminal or another 3705. The communications processors supported only hierarchical networks with a mainframe at the center, unlike modern routers which support peer-to-peer networks in which a machine at the end of the line can be both a client and a server at the same time.
    • 3705s and similar devices also relieved the constraints on the maximum number of communication lines per CPU, because a 3705 could support a large number of lines (352 initially) but only counted as one peripheral from the point of view of CPUs and channels.
Since the launch of SNA IBM has introduced improved communications processors, of which the latest is the 3745.
  • Synchronous Data Link Control (SDLC), a protocol which greatly improved the efficiency of data transfer over a single link:
    • SDLC included much more powerful error detection and correction codes than earlier protocols. These codes often enabled the communications cards to correct minor transmission errors without requesting re-transmission, and therefore made it possible to pump data down a line much faster.
    • It enabled terminals and 3705 communications processors to send "frames" of data one after the other without waiting for an acknowledgement of the previous frame - the communications cards had sufficient memory and processing capacity to "remember" the last 7 frames sent or received, request re-transmission of only those frames which contained errors that the error detection and correction codes could not repair, and slot the re-transmitted frames into the right place in the sequence before forwarding them to the next stage.
    • These frames all had the same type of "envelope" (frame header and trailer) which contained enough information for data packages from different types of terminal to be send along the same communications line, leaving the mainframe to deal with any differences in the formatting of the content or in the rules governing dialogs with different types of terminal.
Remote terminals (i.e. those connected to the mainframe by telephone lines) and 3705 communications processors would have SDCL-capable communications cards.
  • VTAM, software which provided log-in and routing services within the mainframe. A terminal user would log-in via VTAM to a specific application or application environment (e.g. CICS or TSO), and VTAM would then route all data from that terminal to the appropriate application or application environment until the user logged out and possibly logged in to another application. In the 1980s further software (mainly from third-party vendors) made it possible for a terminal to have simultaneous sessions with different applications or application environments.

[edit] Advantages and Disadvantages

SNA removed link control from the application program and placed it in the NCP. This had the following advantages and disadvantages:

[edit] Advantages

  • Localization of problems in the telecommunications network was easier because a relatively small amount of software actually dealt with communication links. There was a single error reporting system.
  • Adding communication capability to an application program was much easier because the formidable area of link control software that typically requires interrupt processors and software timers was relegated to system software and NCP.

[edit] Disadvantages

  • Connection to non-SNA networks was difficult. An application which needed access to some communication scheme, which was not supported in the current version of SNA, faced obstacles. Before IBM included X.25 support (NPSI) in SNA, connecting to an X.25 network would have been awkward. Conversion between X.25 and SNA protocols could have been provided either by NCP software modifications or by an external protocol converter.
  • SNA network installation is complicated and SNA network products are (or were) expensive. Attempts to reduce SNA network complexity by adding IBM Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking functionality were not really successful, if only because the migration from traditional SNA to SNA/APPN was very complex, without providing much additional value, at least initially. SNA software licences (VTAM) cost as much as $10000 a month for high-end systems. And SNA IBM 3745 Communications Controllers typically cost over $100K. TCP/IP was still seen as a toy for scientists and unfit for professional applications e.g. in the finance industry until the late 1980s, but rapidly took over in the 1990s due to its elegance and its lower cost. When the price of SNA products was lowered too, it was too late.

[edit] Logical Unit Types

Network Addressable Units in an SNA network are distinguished in System Service Control Points (typically in the mainframe), Physical Units (relating to boxes) and Logical Units (relating to applications or subsystems such as CICS and TSO) or terminals.[vague]

SNA essentially offers transparent communication: equipment specifics don't impose any constraints onto LU-LU communication. But eventually it serves a purpose to make a distinction between LU types, as the application must take the functionality of the terminal equipment into account (e.g. screen sizes and layout). Therefore, SNA defines several kinds of devices, called Logical Unit types. LU0 provides for undefined devices, or build your own protocol. LU1 devices are printers. LU2 devices are dumb 3270 display terminals. LU3 devices are printers using 3270 protocols. LU4 devices are batch terminals. LU5 has never been defined. LU6 provides for protocols between two applications. LU7 provides for sessions with 5250 terminals. The primary ones in use are LU1, LU2, and LU6.2 (an advanced protocol for application to application conversations).

Within SNA there are two types of data stream to connect local terminals and printers; there is the 3270 data stream mainly used by mainframes (zSeries family) and the 5250 data stream mainly used by minicomputers/servers such as the S/36, S/38, and AS/400 (now System i).

Starting from version 5.2 of OS/400, SNA for client-access is no longer supported.

The term 37xx refers to IBM's family of SNA communications controllers. The 3745 supports up to eight high-speed T1 circuits, the 3725 is a large-scale node and front-end processor for a host, and the 3720 is a remote node that functions as a concentrator and router.

[edit] Competitors

The proprietary networking architecture for Honeywell Bull mainframes is Distributed Systems Architecture (DSA). Communications package for DSA is TNVIP. Like SNA, DSA is also no longer supported for client access. Bull mainframes are fitted with Mainway for translating DSA to TCP/IP and TNVIP devices are replaced by Terminal Emulations (GLink, Winsurf). GCOS 8 supports TNVIP SE over TCP/IP.

[edit] References

 This article does not cite any references or sources. (January 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

[edit] External links