Re: iSCSI Naming and Discovery Requirements Document

["Jim Hafner" <hafner@almaden.ibm.com>]

Ralph,

IMHO, there is as yet some confusion with respect to the interpretation of
SAM's "service delivery port" for iSCSI.  For example, is a service
delivery port just a NIC (and so is addressed by MAC), or is it an
ipaddress:TCPport (that might get resolved to any one of a number of NICs)
or can a service delivery port span multiple ipaddress:TCPport connections
(so that it is defined as the coalescing of all the socket connections in a
single session)?

As you are aware, the answer has implications with respect to reservations
and the like, so this needs to be answered carefully.

My "sense of the group" is that the third option captures what is desired
for reservations.  Namely, the iSCSI session is presented to the SCSI layer
as defining the I_T nexus.  This means (I think) that the service delivery
port is neither the physical NIC nor the logical ipaddress:TCPport but more
precisely the "endpoint" of a session.

I could be wrong both on the implications of session in this context and in
my "sense of the group", but I throw this out for discussion and
clarification.

Jim Hafner


Ralph Weber <ralphoweber@compuserve.com>@ece.cmu.edu on 11-27-2000 07:32:40
AM

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Subject:  Re: iSCSI Naming and Discovery Requirements Document



In "3. Naming and Discovery Requirements" list entry 2) contains
the following sentence:

"The iSCSI service delivery port address is made up of IP address
and  port number."

Later, in or after list entry 6) the following appears:

"The initiator can access the target using the following:
 i) IP name or IP address
        +
 ii) TCP port number
        +
 iii) [Target WWUI  or (Target WWUI and path)]"

Is the "port number" described in list entry 2) the same as the
"TCP port number" described in list entry 6)?

If they are the same, I suggest that list entry 2) needs to be
clarified because I read it to indicate that multiple hardware
ports might be used to access a single IP address.

Thanks.

Ralph...