公开(公告)号：CA2130412A1

公开(公告)日：1995-07-01

申请号：CA2130412

申请日：1994-08-18

Applicant: IBM

Inventor： BRITTON KATHRYN H ,  DOERINGER WILLIBALD ,  DYKEMAN HAROLD D ,  CHUNG TEIN-YAW ,  EDWARDS ALLEN K ,  MATHEW JOHNY ,  POZEFSKY DIANE P ,  SARKAR SOUMITRA ,  TURNER ROGER D

IPC: H04L12/46 ,  H04L29/06 ,  H04L29/08 ,  H04L12/66

Abstract: A multiprotocol transport network (MPTN) gateway provides transparent interconnection of two or more SPTNs (12, 14, 16, 18) 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)) (38) 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.