Re: Reminder: IP Storage Mtg / Wed. Feb. 16 @ 1:00pm PST

[Aman Singla <aman@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com>]

Hi,

Talking in context of the 3 layer protocol model, SI->Transport->IP,
I'd like to bring to attention an ANSI draft standard protocol -
Scheduled Transfer Protocol (STP).

The design of STP has been driven by requirements very similar to
those outlined in the Storage of IP Design Framework, namely
low-latency, high bandwidth, low CPU utilization, a measure of
congestion/flow control built in, etc.
STP can very easily fit in as the transport layer in the 3 layer
protocol model. STP can be IP encapsulated, and a draft specification
for SCSI over STP also exists.

STP has existed on Irix as part of the GSN infrastructure; SGI along
with Genroco demonstrated a SCSI over STP solution interfacing a
Origin 2000 server with GSN to a fibre channel raid network via a
Genroco bridge, at CERN in October 1999.

STP is truly media independent, with support for GbE in the works.
We recently made an alpha release of STP on Linux to the open-source
community (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/stp), and going forward intend
to fully support it on a variety of interfaces, starting with GbE.

More information about STP and the various drafts can be accessed
off http://www.hippi.org/cDOCS.html.
If there is interest in learning more about this protocol, we
could arrange for a presentation/demo at one of the meetings for
the proposed working group.
(Note: STP is also refered to as ST in the marketing literature
of various vendors - Genroco, Essential, PMR..)

thanks,

Aman Singla
MTS, SGI