ESCON (Enterprise Systems Connection) is a data connection created by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, and is commonly used to connect their

mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

s to peripheral devices such as

disk storage Disc or disk may refer to: * Disk (mathematics) In geometry, a disk (Spelling of disc, also spelled disc) is the region in a plane (geometry), plane bounded by a circle. A disk is said to be ''closed'' if it contains the circle that constitut ...

tape drive A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic-tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and long archival stability. ...

s and

IBM 3270 The IBM 3270 is a family of Block-oriented terminal, block oriented display and printer computer terminals introduced by IBM in 1971 and normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. The 3270 was the successor to the IBM 2260 display ter ...

display controllers. ESCON is an

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

half-duplex A duplex communication system is a point-to-point system composed of two or more connected parties or devices that can communicate with one another in both directions. Duplex systems are employed in many communications networks, either to allow ...

, serial interface. It originally operated at a rate of 10MB/s, which was later increased to 17MB/s. The current maximum distance is 43 kilometers. IBM introduced ESCON in September 1990 as part of its System/390 announcement. It replaced the older, slower (4.5MB/s), copper-based, parallel,

IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...

Bus and Tag Bus and Tag is an IBM standard for a computer peripheral interface, and was commonly used to connect their mainframe computers to peripheral devices such as line printers, disk storage, Magnetic tape data storage, magnetic tape drives and IBM 327 ...

channels technology of 1960-1990 era mainframes. Optical fiber is smaller in diameter and weight, and hence could save installation costs. Space and labor could also be reduced when fewer physical links were required - due to ESCON's switching features. ESCON is being supplanted by the substantially faster

FICON FICON (Fibre Connection) is the IBM proprietary name for the ANSI ''FC-SB-3 Single-Byte Command Code Sets-3 Mapping Protocol'' for Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. It is a FC layer 4 protocol used to map both IBM's antecedent (either ESCON or para ...

, which runs over

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...

. ESCON allows the establishment and reconfiguration of channel connections dynamically, without having to take equipment off-line and manually move the cables. ESCON supports channel connections using serial transmission over a pair of fibers. The ESCON Director supports dynamic switching (which could be achieved prior to ESCON, but not with IBM-only products). It also allows the distance between units to be extended up to 60 km over a dedicated fiber. "Permanent virtual circuits" are supported through the switch. ESCON switching has advantages over a collection of point-to-point links. A peripheral previously capable of accessing a single mainframe can now be connected simultaneously to up to eight mainframes, providing peripheral sharing. The ESCON interface specifications were adopted in 1996 by

ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...

X3T1 committee as the SBCON standard, which is now managed by X3T11.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Escon Computer storage devices Fiber-optic connectors Mainframe computers IBM System/360 mainframe line

See also

References