APPN—An Introduction

This first article in a series on managing APPN Networks briefly introduces a relatively new networking architecture. Both traditional hierarchical SNA Networks and modern distributed Client/Server environments highly benefit from utilizing APPN functionality in their network configurations. APPN actually grew up in an environment which combines these two worlds: The IBM midrange computer environment based on AS/400 machines. APPN is part of IBM SNA (Systems Network Architecture) and many abbreviations in this series of articles actually are commonly used SNA terms.