One of the essential prerequisites for truly distributed computing in heterogeneous networks, such as enterprise networks, is the independence of applications from communication protocols. A general architecture aiming at such an independence must allow applications to identify each other by addresses that may not be understood by the underlying networks. Therefore, it becomes necessary to map application addresses to network addresses. A versatile architecture for this address-mapping requirement has been developed by IBM and published as a Preliminary Specification by the X/Open consortium. The key features of this architecture are explained here and an overview of an early implementation is presented.
By: Willibald Doeringer and Mehdi Nassehi
Published in: RZ2716 in 1995
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