Does anyone have a protocol for testing SNA ?I know Microsoft has a disclaimer, but we have to test it ourselves.

-- Gwen Baumgart (gwen.baumgart@wl.com), June 14, 1999

Answers

Gwen, do you mean the SNA with the FU IBM apar? If so I've heard it is FUBAR :)

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), June 14, 1999.

Andy, could you tell us a bit more about the SNA (IBM) thing. We are moving into that environment rapidly and I'd like to know what questions to ask (provocative).

-- -. (dit@dot.dash), June 14, 1999.

sorry ditdot all I know is that it stands for systems network architecture, it may or not be fubar :), I'm not really a network systems guy, however I'm sure there are one or two on this board who can help...

I've said before, in my mainframe environment I'm expecting major network problems from the telcos and satellites and hubs as our company literally interfaces to tens of thousands of endpoints worldwide. I believe it will be a mess.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), June 14, 1999.

SNA was/is IBM's proprietary alternative to the TCP/IP architecture used in the Internet. IBM designed it to " lock-in" their customers. Critics considered SNA to stand for $NA Stifles Non-IBM Alternatives System Not Available Seven Nasty Alternatives (to OSI)

IBM announced it in 1974, delivered it in 1980, improved it continually and finally modified it so it could co-exist with/use /support TCP/IP info flows.

It is the basis of the mission critical legacy systems that most big companies and governments use. But airlines and rental car companies found that SNA had too much overhead so do not use SNA.

-- Ron Sander (judy_sander@hotmail.com), June 14, 1999.