Re: iSCSI: Session Consensus/Plan -- SCTP

["John Hufferd/San Jose/IBM" <hufferd@us.ibm.com>]

The objection that I have to SCTP has to do with getting HW support, and
normal customer acceptance.  I have the following points:

1. The NIC industry is rapidly moving to supporting TCP/IP offload and
acceleration of OS native TCP/IP Stacks.  This is being done by major
vendors making major investments in ASICs etc.  they are NOT building SCTP
Hardware.  They have business cases that support TCP/IP in hardware, and we
wanted to exploit this by having iSCSI ride on this wave.

2. SCTP is a non proven technology from a robust and load situation.  It
may or may not be great, but we can not afford to find out about a "oops"
situation in load, stability, scaling, etc. as we try to deploy it in vast
numbers.

3. We will need to get the Switch and Router folks to also support SCTP and
to do it in Hardware so that the speed and throughput can be maintained.  I
do not see that happening, at least not right away, when we need to get
volumes moving in order to validate the IP storage SAN concept.

4. I do not think that we can afford to put together the marketing effort
that will be needed to convince customers that SCTP is a great thing, at
the same time that we are trying to convince them that an IP SAN is the
right answer.  Having Two new concept sales points is going to divide the
focus and confuse the issues.  It would be much better to focus on the
concept of an IP SAN that supports the well known and understood TCP/IP, to
which the customer feels comfortable, and for which they have various
management tools.

5. Because of point 1-3 above, I think we will have a hard time getting the
customers to accept SCTP, since there will not be the HW and therefore  the
performance we need, when we need it.

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John L. Hufferd