Some Methods for Providing OSI Transport in SNA

This paper is made up of three parts: first, a review of open systems interconnection (OSI) objectives, followed by a comparison/contrasting of OSI and systems network architecture (SNA) objectives; second, a description of techniques for providing communication between programs residing in systems based on different architectures; and third, the possible application of these techniques to the four lower OSI layers, demonstrating some ways which could be used to provide connectivity between SNA end users and other heterogeneous system end users through OSI protocols.