How MQIPT works

In its simplest configuration, MQIPT acts as an IBM MQ protocol forwarder. It listens on a TCP/IP port and accepts connection requests from IBM MQ channels.

If a well-formed request is received, MQIPT establishes a further TCP/IP connection between itself and the destination IBM MQ queue manager. It then passes all protocol packets it receives from its incoming connection on to the destination queue manager, and it returns protocol packets from the destination queue manager back to the original incoming connection.

No change to the IBM MQ protocol (client/server or queue manager to queue manager) is involved because neither end is directly aware of the presence of the intermediary. New versions of the IBM MQ client or server code are not required.

To use MQIPT, the caller channel must be configured to use the MQIPT host name and port, not the host name and port of the destination queue manager. This is defined with the CONNAME property of the IBM MQ channel. MQIPT reads the incoming data and simply passes it through to the destination queue manager. Other configuration fields, such as the user ID and password in a client/server channel, are similarly passed to the destination queue manager.

Multiple queue managers

MQIPT can be used to allow access to more than one destination queue manager. For this to work, there must be a mechanism to tell MQIPT which queue manager to connect to, so MQIPT uses the incoming TCP/IP port number to determine which queue manager to connect to.

We can therefore configure MQIPT to listen on multiple TCP/IP ports. Each listening port is mapped to a destination queue manager through an MQIPT route. We can define up to 100 such routes, which associate a listening TCP/IP port with the host name and port of the destination queue manager. This means that the host name (IP address) of the destination queue manager is never visible to the originating channel. Each route can handle multiple connections between its listening port and destination, each connection acting independently.

MQIPT configuration file

MQIPT uses a configuration file called mqipt.conf. This file contains definitions of all routes and their associated properties. See Administer and configuring MQIPT for more information about mqipt.conf.

When MQIPT is launched, it starts each route that is listed in the configuration file. Messages are written to the system console showing the status of each route. When message MQCPI078 is shown for a route, that route is ready to accept connection requests.