WAN Manager SPI Programming Guide

WAN Manager SPI Programming Guide—540013-001
Glossary-1
Glossary
ASCII. American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A single-byte code set that
uses only 7 of the 8 bits in a byte to represent each character. The ASCII code set
contains the uppercase and lowercase characters of the U.S. English alphabet, some
punctuation symbols, the digits 0 through 9, and some symbols and control characters.
Because of its limited characters, and because the 8th bit is sometimes used in ASCII
programs as a utility bit, the ASCII code set is not appropriate for use in international
software.
CLIP. See communications line interface processor (CLIP).
communications line interface processor (CLIP). The major programmable device within
the ServerNet wide area network (SWAN) concentrator, providing link-level protocol
and a software interface to the host. The CLIP stores and implements specific
communications protocols.
concentrator manager process (ConMgr). A process provided as part of the wide area
network (WAN) subsystem. The ConMgr process runs in each processor that supports
WAN products and provides management functions to the WAN subsystem and WAN
products, such as downloading data link control (DLC) tasks to the communications
line interface processors (CLIPs) on the ServerNet wide area network (SWAN)
concentrator and selecting the preferred path for the DLC tasks.
data link control (DLC). A set of functions associated with Layer 2 of the Open Systems
Interconnection (OSI) reference model. These functions are responsible for reliable
communication between two physically connected nodes.
data link control (DLC) task. Tasks that support the equivalent to Layer 2 of the Open
Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model. Wide area network (WAN) DLC tasks
execute in the ServerNet wide area network (SWAN) concentrator communications line
interface processor (CLIP), and each WAN DLC task controls one line interface.
DLC. See data link control (DLC).
error number. For the Subsystem Programmatic Interface (SPI), a value that can be
assigned to a return token or to the last field of an error token to identify an error that
occurred. SPI defines a small set of error numbers, but most error numbers are defined
by subsystems.
Ethernet. A local area network (LAN) that uses the carrier sense multiple access with
collision detection (CSMA/CD) access method on a bus topology and is the basis for
the IEEE 802.3 standard.