ESCON

ESCON is an acronym for Enterprise Systems Connection or Enterprise Systems Connectivity, both of which are the same thing. ESCON is a data connection which was created or introduced by the IBM and is usually used to connect the mainframe computers to the other peripheral devices like disk storage, tape drives, other computers, locally attached workstations and other devices using optical fiber technology and dynamically modifiable switches which are widely known by the name of ESCON directors.

ESCON was introduced by the IBM to replace the old and slower copper based, parallel, bus and tag channel technology based on the framework or architecture that was introduced in the era between 1960 – 1990s. The recent ESCON is made up of optic fiber, half-duplex, serial interface. Another reason for introducing the ESCON was that, the old technology that was used before the ESCON was quite larger in size as compared to the new ESCON, so introducing this technology helped the users save the installation costs and moreover along with that with the new ESCON the number of links required were far fewer than the number of links that were required with the older technology to bring about a certain completion of a task and the ECSON switching feature has played an important role in reducing the amount of the links required.

With the use of the new ESCON fiber optic cable the connection of the peripheral device to the main framework can be made as long as 60 km with the help of the chained directors and even with this large distance the data rate itself in the optic fiber link is up to 200 Mbps, which can still be enhanced by the vendors. The main use of ESCON is seen in the Campus area network or the Metropolitan Area Network.