SNA Communications

Personal Communications supports Systems Network Architecture (SNA) type 2.1 nodes (including SNA type 2.0 and SNA type 2.1 support for LUs other than SNA LU 6.2). This support lets you write programs to communicate with many other IBM® SNA products.

You can write programs without knowing the details of the underlying network. All you need to know is the name of the partner LU; you do not need to know its location. SNA determines the partner LU location and the best path for routing data. A change to the underlying network, such as a physical address change, the addition of a new adapter, or the relocation of a machine, does not affect APPC programs. A program might, however, need to establish link connections over switched SDLC connections.

When Personal Communications starts, it establishes local LU and logical link definitions, which are stored in a configuration file. The system management application programming interface (API) provides functions that control configuration definition and adapter and link activation.