Informational paper describing FC/SCTP/IP

["Douglas Otis" <dotis@sanlight.net>]

All,

To help create an understanding regarding concepts of the FC-SCTP-IP
specifications as contrasted against the iSCSI draft, I have posted an
informational paper.  Basic differences are found in the use of raw FCP
structures, buffer credit rather than a command window, together with a full
dependence on a separate database for client configuration.  The suggestion
for creating a mapping definition for iSCSI is an attempt to close a gap
between these two approaches and to allow a common configuration scheme.
This would likely be beneficial for general encapsulation schemes as well.
The advantage is simply a means to allow recovery between different server
vendors and perhaps different transports.  In the end, these differences are
fairly insignificant and both standards should be able to allow compatible
access to a SAN being made visible by a transport.

In the case of FC-SCTP-IP, this transport is intended to be primitive as it
is expected additional features are added in close proximity to the client.
I do not see this standard as taking away from the iSCSI effort and should
help illustrate a means to create extensible bootstrapping able to support
both these methods and possibly future ones.

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-otis-scsi-ip-01.txt
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-otis-fc-sctp-ip-01.txt

Doug