IEEE 802.3 Ethernet data link control (DLC8023) supports the System Network Architecture (SNA) logical link control (LLC) protocol and state tables as described in the Token-Ring Network Architecture Reference, which contains the local area network (LAN) IEEE 802.2 LLC standard. Additional name-discovery services have been added for establishing remote connections.
A combined station supports a balanced (peer-to-peer) configuration on a logical point-to-point connection and allows either station to initiate asynchronously the transmission of commands at any response opportunity. The data source in each combined station controls the data sink in the other station. Data transmissions flow as primary commands; acknowledgments and status flow as secondary responses.
Both asynchronous disconnect mode (ADM) and asynchronous balanced mode extended (ABME) are supported. ADM is the default whenever a link session is initiated and is switched to ABME only after the set asynchronous balanced mode extended (SABME) command sequence is complete. Once operating in the ABME command mode, information frames containing user data can be transferred. The ABME command mode then remains active until the LLC session terminates, which occurs due to either the disconnect (DISC) command packet sequence or a major link error.
All communication between a local and a remote station is accomplished by the transmission of a packet that contains the IEEE 802.3 headers and trailers as well as an encapsulated LLC Link Protocol Data Unit (LPDU).
The DLC8023 Frame Encapsulation figure illustrates the DLC8023 data packet:
The IEEE 802.3 data packet consists of the following fields:
Note: Preamble and CRC are added and deleted by the hardware adapter.
