Edinburgh, Scotland — (press release) — Spider Software, a UK-based developer of networking protocol software, announced today 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.

“Linux introduces an exciting, new operating system of choice for our customer base,” said Nick Felisiak, CTO Spider Software. “The portability of SpiderSTREAMS has enabled us to provide support for commercially available Linux implementations within no time at all. We are also working closely with alliance partners to address the high availability and real-time extensions required for many of our customer applications.”

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.

About Spider Software

Spider Software is one of the world's leading suppliers of embedded telecommunications and networking software to the OEM marketplace. Spider develops and licenses its software technology to some of the leading telecommunications, networking, computing, and embedded companies in the world, including Motorola, Lucent, Nortel, Ericsson, IBM, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems. Spider's products bridge the gap and promote interoperability between LAN/WAN and voice/data products. Its software portfolio includes Frame Relay; SS7; PPP; ISDN; TCP; X.25; OSI and Distributed STREAMS. The primary benefits of licensing Spider's products are portability, interoperability, maturity and resilience.

Spider Softer was acquired in April, 2000 by Boca Raton, FL., based Artesyn Technologies, a developer of power conversion products for the computing and telecommunications markets. Its subsidiary, Artesyn Communications Products (www.artesyn.com/cp), designs and manufactures high performance board-level computers and communication controllers, integrating them with real-time operating system and protocol software to form complete subsystems. Spider works closely with Artesyn Communications.

 
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