Re: Peter Johansson: Re: IETF mailing list question on Storage over Ethernet/IP

[julian_satran@il.ibm.com]

True - 1394 is a strong contender for the SOHO and home. There is an
consumer-products oriented consortia trying to standardize its use for
Audio-Video. I am just curios if those companies will ever come to an
agreement and use it (how many compatible IR remote controls have you
seen?). It would be also an interesting exercise to see how much overhead
would TCP add to the stack ? (and eliminate the distance limitations
inherent to SBP)

Julo

Julian Satran - IBM Research at Haifa

Dave Nagle <bassoon@yogi.ece.cmu.edu> on 26/05/2000 21:47:40

Please respond to Dave Nagle <bassoon@yogi.ece.cmu.edu>

To:   ips@ece.cmu.edu
cc:    (bcc: Julian Satran/Haifa/IBM)
Subject:  Peter Johansson: Re: IETF mailing list question on Storage over
      Ethernet/IP






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Date:    Fri, 26 May 2000 10:39:58 -0700
From:    Peter Johansson <PJohansson@acm.org>
To:      IP Storage <IPS@ece.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: IETF mailing list question on Storage over Ethernet/IP

Some time ago, Randy_Haagens@hp.com wrote:

>Just about any reliable transport will do nicely for transporting SCSI
>commands.

Very true---which is why it's difficult to discuss these issues
generically. Many questions can't be answered until you look at the
particular needs of the particular environment.

In the home network, IEEE 1394 is a strong contender, with speeds that
range from 400 Mbps to 1.6 Gbps. TCP does add a lot of overhead; it's
appropriate to consider it only when other considerations (extensibility to
the WAN, for example) predominate.

In an environment like the home network, a "native" solution may be better.

I mention all of this because I think it's worth your time to look at NCITS
325-1998, Serial Bus Protocol 2 (SBP-2). SBP-2 describes the encapsulation
of SCSI commands and a DMA architecture for the efficient transfer of data
over IEEE 1394.

OK, you say, "So what? FCP does this. SSA did this." and so on. Well, the
point is that Fibre Channel is not a serious contender for use as a
network. In some situations, such as the home or small office, IEEE 1394
is.

Regards,

Peter Johansson

Congruent Software, Inc.
98 Colorado Avenue
Berkeley, CA  94707

(510) 527-3926
(510) 527-3856 FAX

PJohansson@ACM.org

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