APPC additional tips

To activate APPC Networking Services for Windows and Personal Communications/3270 in any order in that environment it was necessary to increase the values of the MINSAP and MINLINK parameters for the IEEE 802.2 protocol driver for NDIS in the CONFIG.SYS file as follows:

DEVICEHIGH = C:\LSP\DXME0MOD.SYS N ,,,2,2

where C:\LSP specifies the LAN Support Program directory in which the IEEE 802.2 protocol driver (DXME0MOD.SYS) was installed.

The final two positional parameters specify the minimum service access point and minimum link station values required to support activation of an independent LU 6.2 for APPC Networking Services for Windows and activation of a dependent LU 2 for Personal Communications/3270. If additional LUs are required, for example to support additional dependent LU 2 connections, the minimum service access point and minimum link station values might need to be increased.

Configuration of network support for SNA APPC communications is somewhat more complex than configuration for TCP/IP owing largely to the transition that SNA has made from an essentially static hierarchical networking model to a dynamic peer-to-peer networking model. Recognizing the difficulty that this transition presents to customers trying to configure APPC application support and APPN network support, networking specialists at IBM® have produced the Multi-platform APPC Configuration Guide (GG24-4485). This guide is a valuable aid for anyone who wants to understand how to configure APPC and APPN communications in any of the environments in which the ISPF C/S capability can be enabled. It is available from IBM Redbooks.

One way to simplify APPC configuration is to use the fully qualified network name of the SNA control point defined for your workstation as the independent SNA LU type 6.2 that will support ISPF C/S connections. The control point for your workstation represents various subsystem functions associated with your communications software. The fully qualified network name for the control point can be used not only to identify that set of subsystem capabilities but also to support applications such as the ISPF workstation agent that use an independent SNA LU type 6.2. If you do not know, or cannot remember, the fully qualified name associated with your workstation control point you can determine the name as follows:

Table 1. Determining the full qualified name
If you have this SNA APPC workstation software	do this on the workstation
IBM APPC Networking Services for Windows 1.00.02 (base product with CSD #2).	From the "IBM APPC Networking Services" program group select the icon for the Configure program item. Select the Step 1 pushbutton from the Networking Services Configuration window. The fully qualified local LU name for APPC communications will appear in the General Configuration window.