Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer network managing – Computer network access regulating
Reexamination Certificate
2000-06-27
2004-12-07
Cardone, Jason D. (Department: 2142)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer network managing
Computer network access regulating
C709S224000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06829642
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to computer networks, and more particularly to a method and system in an Internet Protocol (IP) network for automatically and optimally selecting a Telecommunications Network (“Telnet”) 3270 Server according to response time and availability criteria.
BACKGROUND
SNA and IP Environment
Every day, for all sorts of reasons, more and more companies are focusing on the consolidation of the multiple specialized networks they directly operate or lease from service providers onto a single protocol network. These multiple specialized networks are based on diverse networking technologies such as Systems Network Architecture (SNA), Internet Protocol (IP) or Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX).
These companies are making this consolidation one of their top priorities. Companies are almost exclusively selecting the Internet Protocol (IP) as their protocol of choice. However, for the overwhelming majority of these companies using SNA protocols and applications, there still is and will be for the many years to come, a major requirement in this changing environment. The requirement is for the employees of these companies to keep the capability they always had to access the huge amount of existing corporate data residing in traditional mainframes and accessible through SNA applications.
TCP/IP
The Internet is a global network of computers and computers networks. The Internet connects computers that use a variety of different operating systems and languages, including UNIX, DOS, Windows, Macintosh, and others. To permit communication among these various systems and languages, the Internet uses a standard language referred to as TCP/IP (“Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol”). The TCP/IP protocol supports three basic applications on the Internet: transmitting and receiving electronic mail, logging into remote computers (“Telecommunications Network” or “Telnet”), and transferring files and programs from one computer to another (“FTP” or “File Transfer Protocol”).
World Wide Web
With the increasing size and complexity of the Internet, tools, often called navigators or navigation systems, have been developed to help find information on the network. Navigation systems that have been developed include programs such as Archie, Gopher and WAIS. The World Wide Web (“WWW” or “the Web”) is a recent superior navigation system. The Web is:
an Internet-based navigation system,
an information distribution and management system, and
a dynamic format for communication.
The Web seamlessly integrates several forms of information, including still images, text, audio and video. A user on the Web using a Graphical User Interface (“GUI”, pronounced “gooey”) may transparently communicate with different host computers on the Internet different system applications (including FTP and Telnet), and different information formats for files and documents including, for example, text, sound and graphics.
Hypermedia
The Web uses hypertext and hypermedia. Hypertext is a subset of hypermedia and refers to computer-based “links” through which uses move from one place to another in a document, or to another document, in a non-linear manner. To accomplish this feature, the Web uses a client-server architecture. The user's computer is said to be a client computer to the Web server computer. Web servers enable a user to access hypertext and hypermedia. The clients send requests to the Web servers, which in turn react, search and respond. The Web allows client-based application softwares to request and receive hypermedia documents (including formatted text, audio, video and graphics) from a Web file server with hypertext link capabilities to other hypermedia documents.
The Web, then, can be viewed as a collection of document files residing on Web host computers that are interconnected by hyperlinks using networking protocols, forming a virtual “web” that spans the Internet.
Uniform Resource Locators
A resource on the Internet may be unambiguously identified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which is a pointer to a particular resource at a particular location. A URL specifies the protocol used to access a server (e.g. http://, ftp://, etc.), the name of the server (e.g. www.ibm.com, and the location of a file on that server (e.g. /products/catalog.html).
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
Each Web page may appear as a complex document that integrates many media, for example, text, images, sounds and animation. Each such page may also contain hyperlinks to other Web documents, so that a user at a client computer may click on icons using a mouse and may activate hyperlink jumps to a new page (which is a graphical representation of another document file) on the same or a different Web server.
A Web Server is a software program run on a Web host computer that responds to requests from Web Clients, typically over the Internet. All Web servers use a language or protocol to communicate with Web Clients which is called HyperText Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”) graphics, sound and video. All types of data, including HyperText Markup Language (“HTML”), can be exchanged among Web servers and clients using this protocol. HTML describes the layout, contents and hyperlinks of the documents and pages to be displayed to the user. When browsing, Web Clients convert user-specified commands into HTTP GET requests, connect to the appropriate Web Server to obtain the information, and await a response. The response from the server may be the requested document or an error message. After a document or an error message is returned, the connection between the Web client and the Web server is closed.
The first version of HTTP is a stateless protocol. That is to say, with HTTP version 1.0, there are no continuous connections between clients and servers. A Web client using HTTP receives a response as HTML data or other data. Newer versions of HTTP break this barrier of a stateless protocol by keeping the connection between the server and client alive under certain conditions.
Browser
After receipt, the Web Client formats and presents the data or activates an ancillary application, such as a sound player, to present the data. To do this, the server or the client first determines the type of data to be received. The Web Client is also referred to as the “Web Browser,” since it in fact browses documents retrieved from the Web Servers.
Telnet 3270
A widely used technique for the transport of SNA information across an IP network is the use of Telnet technologies, specifically the Telnet 3270 (“TN3270”) emulation. This technique for SNA “green screen” workstation users utilizes a Client/Server approach. “Host-On Demand” from IBM or “WebClient” from CISCO are examples of Client software implementations. Network Utility from IBM or CISCO router's offerings are typical server implementations (hardware and software). The “TN3270 Client” software usually runs within the customer's workstation while the “TN3270 Server” software is usually placed in front of the customer's data center mainframes (or sometimes directly within the mainframe itself) or within the customer's branch offices.
As illustrated in
FIG. 1
, IP protocols are used between the TN3270 Server
102
and the TN3270 Clients
101
, while traditional SNA protocols are used between the TN3270 Server
102
and the target SNA applications
103
. More information concerning Telnet, TN3270 and Network Utility can be found in the following publications, incorporated herewith by reference:
“TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview,” Martin W. Murhammer, Orcun Atakan, Stefan Bretz, Larry R. Pugh, Kazunari Suzuki, David H. Wood, IBM International Technical Support Organization, October 1998, GG24-3376-05.
“IBM 2216/Network Utility Host Channel Connection,” Erol Lengerli, Jacinta Carbonell, Thomas Grueter; IBM International Technical Support Organization, January 1999, SG24-5303-00.
“IBM Network Utility Description and Configuration Scenarios,” Tim Kearby, Peter Gayek, Gallus Schlegel, Imre Szabo, Zhi-Yong Zhang; IBM Internationa
Giroir Didier
Hericourt Olivier
Cardone Jason D.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Pivnichny John
Winstead Sechrest & Minick P.C.
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