A Portability Environment for Communication Software

This paper describes a portability environment, which has been developed for a portable network operating system. The environment has to support methods of structuring communication software in multiple threads and has to provide access to lower level communication services in a uniform, guest system independent way. In order to save the users investments in communication-equipment and -software a method is introduced, which integrates multiple networks into a global net. The requirements of a portability environment are analyzed and the developed design concepts are derived. Furthermore alternatives of its implementation in guest systems are discussed. Finally experiences are presented, which have been gained during its portation from the development system to other guest systems.