RE: iFCP: FC-BB exists, why invent something new?

["Franco Travostino" <travos@nortelnetworks.com>]

> I see it this way:
>
> Tunneling may be the right solution if the end user's only goal is
> to
> interconnect existing FC SAN infrastructures.

Tunneling will also interconnect dialect-ridden FC SANs that have
matching weirdness. This can be a blessing and a big curse.

Whenever things stop to work, it won't be easy to detect whether the FC dialects were not compatible after all, whether the IP leg screwed up the timings, or both, actually. Sweeping dialects under the rug can come back to haunt big time (what a bakeoff nightmare to begin with). There is no ingress/egress compartmentalization (or C18N :-) defense against FC oddities popping out at remote places.

-franco

-----
Franco Travostino, Director Content Internetworking Lab
Technology Center
Nortel Networks, Inc.
600 Technology Park
Billerica, MA 01821 USA
Tel: 978 288 7708 Fax: 978 288 4690
email: travos@nortelnetworks.com