FCP over IP/ FC over IP in ipfc

["Rodriguez, Elizabeth G (Elizabeth)" <egrodriguez@lucent.com>]

Hi all,

I see some discussion on FC over IP with respect to the agenda item on
iSCSI: FCP over IP.
I am not certain who proposed this agenda item, so I can not speak to it
directly, but as one of the
authors of FC over IP draft that is being done in the ipfc working group, I
can speak to that.

The FC over IP draft is not directly dealing with encapsulation of FCP
commands over IP.  
It is standardizing a way of bridging FC traffic.  It focuses on the
encapsulation of FC frames over an IP network.
No knowledge of the type of traffic being bridged (e.g. traffic can be link
layer, FCP, IP encapsulated in FC (e.g. following the ipfc draft), etc.) is
required.
This specification focuses more on the bridging of two disjoint FC regions
to form a virtual FC only network.
In other words, with the exception of the FC over IP bridging device,  none
of the FC devices are aware that any of their traffic is going over an IP
network.
Instead of developing large FC only networks, we are taking advantage of the
existing IP network infrastructure and using it as a backbone to bridge FC
networks.

We feel that our efforts address a different concern than iSCSI and that FC
over IP and iSCSI are in many ways complementary.

This work is being done in the ipfc working group, since that is/was the
only group that was dealing with Fibre Channel.

Draft 2 of the FC over IP document has been submitted to the IETF, but I do
not believe it has yet been posted. (draft-ietf-ipfc-fcoverip-02-txt)

If anyone needs or wants more information, feel free to contact me.

Thanks,

Elizabeth G. Rodriguez
Optical Area Networking Group
Lucent Technologies