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

[Wayland Jeong <wayland@troikanetworks.com>]

> Wayland:
> 
> One correction to your analysis.
> The BSW switches do not have to run a dynamic protocol such as
> FSPF-backbone.
> In reality, any proprietary protocol or even static configurations will
> work in the backbone especially when the number of ARs is small.
> Also, my reading is that Switch vendors are not quite there with a
> hierarchial
> implementations. But it will come in time ...
>
Yes. Thanks for the clarification.

I am curious about a couple of things relative to BSW's. The SW-2 spec has
very little detail regarding BSW's. I know that a BSW is the only device
that can advertise a summary descriptor LSR which is used by other BSW's to
identify and isolate conflicting domain ID's. But, I think the definition of
a BSW is quite fuzzy. Maybe you can help me with a couple of questions that
I have:

	1) How does a switch become a BSW? Is it configured as 
	    such? Does it detect that a port is connected to AR-0?

	2) What are the functional requirements of a BSW? From
	    reading SW-2 it looks like it has responsibility for 
	    detecting that it is connected to AR-0, advertising
	    the summary descriptor LSR, isolating conflicting domains,
	    and performing FSPF-backbone routing. Is that it? Can
	    I find a more detailed description of a BSW somewhere?

	3) In the FCIP draft, figure 4 shows a IP-based FC backbone.
	    I'm a bit confused though. The previous diagram (Fig 3) shows
	    an interconnected AR-0 with only a subset of the meshed
	    connections (1->{2,4} ; 2->{1,3} ; 4 -> {1}). Each BSW has 
	    a dedicated E-port for each of the connections listed. Yet,
	    in figure 4, each BSW connects to a single FCIP device
	    which in-turn connects to the IP cloud. In order to 
	    implement the connections in figure 3, the BSW's would
	    need more than a single E-port. Did the authors omit the
	    individual E-ports for clarity?

> Yes, FC-BB2 is postioned to carry the FC-SAN island connectivity to the
next
> step.
> FC-BB2 has decided to align itself with FCIP Model.
>
Sounds great. Is there a detailed draft of the scope of the BB-2 project
other than what is posted on the T11 website?

Thanks in advance.

> -Murali
>
-Wayland