SDLC

networking

Stands for: Synchronous Data Link Control (IBM)

IBM's Synchronous Data Link Control - the link-layer protocol of SNA, and the ancestor of HDLC.

SDLC (mid-1970s) was IBM's bit-oriented, synchronous link protocol for connecting terminals and controllers into SNA. ISO generalized it into HDLC, which in turn seeded LAPB, LAPD, and the rest of the serial family - so SDLC sits at the root of that tree. In its own right it carried IBM mainframe traffic for decades, and migrating SDLC to IP (SDLC-to-LLC conversion, DLSw) was a standard enterprise project as TCP/IP took over.

Also known as: sdlc, synchronous data link control

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