A MULTIPLE INTERFACE MEDIA INTERCONNECT CONTROLLER FOR THE FASTBUS ENVIRONMENT

THOUGH MUCH HAS BEEN DONE TO IMPROVE THE DATA GATHERING AND MASTER EVENT PROCESSING MODULES FOR THE COLLIDER INSTALLATION EXPERIMENTS WITHIN DOE, VERY LITTLE HAS BEEN DONE TO ADDRESS THE CRITICAL COMMUNICATIONS REQUIREMENTS NEEDED TO IMPROVE INTERCONNECTION AND INTEROPERABILITY WITHIN THE FASTBUS COMMUNITY. PHASE I WILL INVESTIGATE DEVELOPMENT OF A MULTIPLE INTERFACE MEDIA INTERCONNECT CONTROLLER (MIMIC) SINGLE BOARD COMMUNICATIONS MODULE FOR THE FASTBUS ENVIRONMENT. THE MIMIC WILL BE A DEDICATED COMMUNICATIONS SERVER FULFILLING A VERY FLEXIBLE ROLE AS A POINT OF INTERCONNECTION AMONG FASTBUS SYSTEMS USING A RICH VARIETY OF COMMUNICATIONS CHANNELS. MIMIC WILL PROVIDE SEVERAL CHANNEL INTERFACES: A FIBER DISTRIBUTED DATA INTERFACE (FDDI) FOR VERY HIGH SPEED LOCAL AREA NETWORK (LAN) SERVICE; ETHERNET, PROVIDING COMPATIBILITY WITH EXISTING LOW SPEED LAN IMPLEMENTATIONS; A MASS STORAGE CHANNEL (SCSI, SCSI-2, OR IPI-2) FOR ACCESS TO COMMERCIAL STORAGE MEDIA (OPTICAL DISK, HARD DRIVE, ETC.); A FASTBUS CABLE SEGMENT INTERCONNECT, PROVIDING SHORT DISTANCE ULTRA HIGH SPEED DATA THROUGHPUT; AND RS232/RS422 SERIAL INTERFACES FOR TERMINAL OR WORKSTATION ACCESS. MIMIC WILL ALSO HOST THE TCP/IP NETWORK PROTOCOL, AND THIS WILL PROVIDETHE FASTBUS ENVIRONMENT ACCESS TO THE INTERNET WIDE AREA NETWORK THAT SPANS MOST OF THE UNITED STATES.