Spider Software Develops Networking Protocol Software for Linux

<%=company1%>, a UK- based developer of networking protocol software, announced that it has ported SpiderSTREAMS to Linux to provide a platform for the deployment of wide area communications protocols.

Spider's implementation runs the STREAMS protocol stacks as a Linux process, and interacts with applications which wish to use the STREAMS services through a specially developed inter-process communication driver. This approach requires no modifications to the Linux kernel code, and will work well with real-time extensions to the system.

SpiderSTREAMS acts as an enabling technology, which provides the means for Spider's Frame Relay, ISDN, X.25, TCP and SS7 STREAMS-based protocol stacks to run in many operating system environments. Frame Relay and X.25 will be the first protocols to be deployed by Spider in a Linux environment. It will initially use PC hardware and PCI interface cards, but as Linux is ported to more architectures, such as PowerPC and PowerQUICC processors, the Spider products will only require the development of a suitable hardware driver. Spider already has PowerQUICC support running under VxWorks, so supporting this hardware with Linux will be an easy next step.

Spider Softer, which was acquired in April, 2000 by Boca Raton, FL., based Artesyn Technologies, a developer of power conversion products for the computing and telecommunications markets, develops and licenses software that bridges the gap and promotes interoperability between LAN/WAN and voice/data products. Its software portfolio includes Frame Relay; SS7; PPP; ISDN; TCP; X.25; OSI and Distributed STREAMS.

Edited by Bruce A. Bennett