Re: iFCP as an IP Storage Work Item

[David Robinson <david.robinson@EBay.Sun.COM>]

I am throwing in my hat to have the WG support both iFCP and
FCIP.  From a business/customer perspective I find believable
markets for both approaches (both of which are still speculation).
From a technical perspective they are similar enough that having
one standard mechanism and one different defacto mechanism will
cause more problems than it solves.

It is clear that the semantic meaning of the two proposed protocols
cannot be merged as they do not operate in the same plane of
traditional stacks. However, from my reading of the two proposals
the encapsulation mechanisms are remarkably similar even though
their semantics are diverge significantly.  What I have started
(before my two weeks away from work, ahhhh...) but haven't
yet finished, is an investigation on standardizing a common
encapsulation protocol for FC over TCP/IP. The the FCIP vs iFCP
becomes a higher level interpretation of the semantics of the
bits instead of also having two completely different stacks.

	-David