Will or can DLSW talk SNA over DIX/EthernetII?

[mdross]

Hi. I have a device that can talk SNA only over the DIX/Ethernet2 frame format. For this reason, it cannot communicate via Ethernet transparent bridging with our mainframe OSA Express, which requires SNA to ride the 802.3/802.2 Ethernet frame format.

My intention has been to try to resolve this by configuring DLSW (Ethernet-to-Ethernet) between two routers placed between these non-communicating devices. The hope is that DLSW will use the required 802.3 frame format to communicate on one side with the mainframe (which of course does work) and use the DIX Ethernet frame format to communicate on the other side (separate router) with the device that requires SNA to use DIX.

There is a command for this purpose, source-bridge enable-80d5, but I don't know if that command has any effect Ethernet-to-Ethernet, transparent bridging only. Without it, over Ethernet, is DLSW "smart enough" to use the frame format required by the end host?

Thank you.

[dixho]

source-bridge enable-80d5 is local significant. It does not know the interface type of the remote dlsw router. In other words, the router with source-bridge enable-80d5 configured (say Router_a) understands DIX frames. The Router_a converts the DIX frames into information required by DLSw SSP protocol (i.e. SSAP, DSAP, MAC addresses and so on). Router_a has no idea how the remote DLSw router use the information.

Similarly, Router_a converts a DLSw frame into DIX frames. The remote DLSw router has no idea that Router_a is using DIX frame format.