Connectivity and gateway functions

TCP/IP connectivity and gateway functions handle the physical interfaces and the routing of IP data packets called datagrams. The following communication interfaces are supported by z/OS® Communications Server:
ATM
Enables TCP/IP to send data to an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network using an OSA-2 or OSA-Express ATM adapter over an ATM virtual circuit.
CDLC
Provides connectivity to a Network Control Program (NCP) through 3745/3746 network Front End Processor (FEP) controllers.
CLAW
Provides access from IBM® RS/6000® workstations directly to TCP/IP hosts over a channel. The CLAW (common link access to workstation) interface can also be used to provide connectivity to the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), such as the Cisco Channel Interface Processor (CIP).
CTC
Provides access to TCP/IP hosts by way of a channel-to-channel (CTC) connection established over a System z® ESCON channel.
HYPERchannel
Provides access to TCP/IP hosts by way of HYPERchannel series A devices and series DX devices that function as series A devices.
LCS
Provides access to TCP/IP hosts using the following devices or features:
  • An IBM 3172 Interconnect Controller, which connects to a token ring, an Ethernet, or Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) local area network
  • An IBM 8232
  • An IBM 2216 Multiaccess Connector Model 400
  • An OSA-2 feature: FDDI, Ethernet/Token Ring (EN/TR), or ATM in LAN emulation mode
  • An OSA-Express feature: 1000BASE-T Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, ATM in LAN emulation mode, or High Speed Token Ring (HSTR)
  • An OSA-Express2 feature: 1000BASE-T Ethernet
MPCIPA
Provides access to:
  • TCP/IP hosts that use:
    • OSA-Express feature: Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), 1000BASE-T Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, HSTR, or ATM in LAN emulation mode
    • OSA-Express2 feature: GbE, 10 GbE, or 1000BASE-T Ethernet
    • OSA-Express3 or later feature: GbE or 10 GbE
    • HiperSockets™: Uses the Internal Queued Direct I/O (iQDIO). HiperSockets provides high-speed, low-latency IP message passing between logical partitions (LPARs) within a single IBM eServer™ zSeries or later server.

    The OSA-Express features support the Queued Direct I/O (QDIO) architecture. IPv6 is supported on all Ethernet features in QDIO mode.

  • An ensemble that uses:
    • OSA-Express3 or later feature configured as CHPID type OSX
    • OSA-Express3 or later feature configured as CHPID type OSM
MPCOSA
Provides access to TCP/IP hosts by way of an OSA-2 adapter configured in HPDT MPC mode for Fast Ethernet or FDDI.
MPCPTP
Provides access to TCP/IP hosts through multipath channel point-to-point (MPCPTP) links. MPCPTP supports IPv4 and IPv6 protocols. MPCPTP can be used in two ways to provide direct connectivity to other mainframe hosts running z/OS Communications Server:
  • By using a set of two or more System z channels
  • By configuring to use XCF services, if the System z hosts are part of the same sysplex
MPCPTP can also be used to provide the following connectivity options:
  • Direct communication between two z/OS Communications Server TCP/IP Services protocol stacks running on the same MVS™ host without requiring any network attachments
  • Connectivity to network attachments such as the IBM 2216 Multiaccess Controller Model 400 or the IBM RS/6000
IBM 10GbE RoCE Express® feature
Enables the use of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) processing by using Shared Memory Communications over RDMA (SMC-R) protocols.
SAMEHOST
Provides connectivity between the TCP/IP address space and other program address spaces within the same MVS host. The SAMEHOST Data Link Control (DLC) provides support for the SNA backbone network (SNALINK LU0 and SNALINK LU6.2) and the X.25 network.

The VTAM® component of z/OS Communications Server provides the I/O support for each of these communication interfaces, and requires the creation (dynamically or through definition) of Transport Resource List entries (TRLEs) to represent each interface.

Parent topic: Overview of z/OS Communications Server