FCIP Draft and Author Discussions Summary

["Murali Rajagopal" <muralir@lightsand.com>]

A summary of the recent discussions amongst the FCIP authors appears below.

1) FCIP Models: Port modeling discussion centers on how the TCP/IP port
   fits into the FC network and how to coordinate the working
   and inter-working of the FC and TCP worlds. The main area
   of discussion has been the lack of an interface between an
   FCIP device and the FC fabric. The discussion has been led
   by FC experts from T11.
   < A more detailed summary of the proposals that reached some
    consensus appaers later in this email>
2) FCIP discovery (Facing Internet)to possibly adopt iSCSI methods if
suitable.
3) Common encapsulation for FCIP and iFCP being floated as seperate efforts.
   Outcome of Minneapolis meeting will tell what formats to use.

A new draft incorporating *some* of above items will be released in the near
future including:

1) change the stack diagram (fig. 2) to reflect interface
   to FC-SW
2) section 5.2: add paragraph to explain TCP-FC frame mapping.
3) fig. 4 modified to show a non-one-to-one mapping of FC
   frame inside a TCP segment as suggested by R. Weber.
4) section 9: replace a paragraph discussing fragmentation
   and performance.
5) annex A: pare down list of byte-codes that FCIP support to
     those supported by FC-BB as discussed in Orlando.

*****************FCIP Models Deatiled Summary ***************************
=========================================================

+-----+                                         +-----+
| SW1 |                                         | SW3 |
+-----+                                         +-----+
   |       +-----+                   +-----+       |
   |       |     |                   |     |       |
+-----+E  B| BBW |   /\/\/\/\/\/\    | BBW |E  E+-----+
| SW2 |----|  1  |---\           \---|  2  |----| SW4 |
+-----+    |     |   /           /   |     |    +-----+
           +-----+   \           \   +-----+
                     /           /
       <========= Virtual ISL =======>
                 (SW-2 to BBW 2)

       <========= Virtual ISL =======>
                 (SW-2 to BBW 4)

              <== Virtual ISL =======>
                 (BBW 3 to BBW 2)
                     \           \
                     /    IP     /
           +-----+   \  Network  \   +-----+
           |     |   /           /   |     |
+-----+E  E| BBW |   \           \   | BBW |B  E+-----+
| SW6 |----|  3  |---/           /---|  4  |----| SW7 |
+-----+    |     |   \/\/\/\/\/\/    |     |    +-----+
   |       +-----+                   +-----+       |
   |                                               |
+-----+                                         +-----+
| SW5 |                                         | SW8 |
+-----+                                         +-----+

========================================================


The Fibre Channel model for an FCIP device is proposed
to be an extension of the Backbone WAN (BBW) device
currently defined for ATM (BBW_ATM) and SONET (BBW_SONET)
in FC-BB.  The planned extensions to the current BBW
model include:

  1) Defining the Fibre Channel operational details of
     a BBW_TCP/IP device
  2) Providing for three Fibre Channel interconnection
     configurations transported by BBW_TCP/IP devices:
     a) [B_Port]..BBW_TCP/IP<---->BBW_TCP/IP..[B_Port]
     b) [E_Port]..BBW_TCP/IP<---->BBW_TCP/IP..[E_Port]
     c) [B_Port]..BBW_TCP/IP<---->BBW_TCP/IP..[E_Port]

Note: The mirror case of c) is operationally identical
to c).

  3) Defining Virtual inter-switch links (ISL's) between
     the E_ports on BBW_TCP/IP devices.

Because substantial Fibre Channel fluency is required for
the BBW_TCP/IP definition, it is anticipated that FCIP will
contain only a high level overview of the model, with the
details appearing in FC-BB-2 (an existing T11 project
created specifically to extend the Backbone concept to
TCP/IP).

Regards,

Murali Rajagopal

IPS WG FCIP TC