On the interconnection of commercial LANs

A report is presented on the author´s experiment in interconnecting commercially available local area networks (LANs). The networks used were the NCR Tower net, an Ethernet-based LAN using Xerox Internet Protocols, running on three NCR Tower minicomputers running under Unix, each serially connected to six NCR microcomputers running under MS-DOS; THE IBM PC-Network, a broadband LAN running on 24 IBM PC-ATs using special IBM protocols; and an experimental network of IBM PCs connected using Ethernet with TCP/IP protocols. The various internetworking philosophies that were considered and the approach finally used are presented. The most important problems encountered during the implementation process and the adopted solutions are discussed