Merge FCIP and iFCP?

[Black_David@emc.com]

In a further attempt to get efforts refocused on the
important work before us ...

I believe that it is the rough consensus of the WG that
IF work on iFCP is undertaken, THEN the iFCP and FCIP
protocols (and their protocol specifications) should not
be merged.

Anyone who disagrees should send me email directly rather
than posting to the list.  Also, please note the "IF" in
the above consensus call.

OTOH, the issue of whether a common encapsulation is
to be used is open.  Note that a common encapsulation
could consist almost entirely of using the reserved
bits in the FCIP header as an (IANA-allocated) protocol
number field and agreeing to use common encodings of
the SOF and EOF frame delimiters.

With my WG co-chair hat off, I have a technical comment
to add.  One of the arguments made against a common
encapsulation has been to observe the wide variety of
IP in IP tunnels that exist in IETF specs.  In 20/20
hindsight, and based on having worked on aspects of
tunneling protocols (e.g., RFC 2983) my opinion is
that this is more of an argument in favor of a common
encapsulation because there are too many sorts of
IP in IP tunnels (i.e., if things could be done over
again from a blank slate, there would be fewer).

--David

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David L. Black, Senior Technologist
EMC Corporation, 42 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
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