The many faces of Networking

The Many Faces of Networking Before the great LAN explosion, networking, for the most part, addressed the connection of distributed devices to a central location. Although some pioneering companies, such as Digital Equipment, offered LAN technology in these early days, the bulk of the market was accustomed to a centralized computing environment. In this centralized approach, the primary concern was to find the most practical and economical way to connect terminals, printers, and other data …

…unit. · Gateway. A gateway attaches seemingly incompatible networks, such as IBM's SNA and Digital's DECnet. In a nutshell, a gateway is a complicated form of protocol converter--it converts multiple protocols and emulates multiple devices to provide a wide variety of services. Gateways can be used to link electronic mail systems, to enable one type or terminal to access another type of host, to provide file transfer between networks, or to perform all of these functions.