FC encapsulation

["Colin Kelly" <ckelly@tropicnetworks.com>]

I have a question regarding the proposed ieft draft
(draft-ietf-ips-fcencapsulation-03), regarding FC
encapsulation, as a basis for FCIP, IFCP, and mFCP
(plus, I assume, any potential future higher
level encapsulations, such as the martini draft, or
other "virtual wire" encapsulations).

The FCIP draft states that "FC Primitive Signals, Primitive
Sequences, and Class 1 Frames are not transmitted across an
FCIP link because they cannot be encoded using FC Frame
Encapsulation".  I understand this restriction for primitive
signals/sequences, as they are never framed/transmitted, but
do not understand the reason for the class 1 frame restriction.

The proposed FC frame encapsulation is consistent with this
restriction, in that in section 5.3, the FC SOF translation
table (table 1) does not contain SOFc1, SOFi1, or SOFn1
entries.  Other that this, the draft does not mention which
FC classes are or are not supported, or why.

Is there a fundamental reason why the FC encapsulation draft
does not include class 1?  The fibre channel standards (as far
as I can tell) do not exclude the possibility of allowing
class 1 connections through a fabric, so regardless of the intent
of the FCIP, IFCP, and mFCP encapsulations, I do not see why
this draft should exclude class 1.

If there is not underlying reason, then Table 1 within the draft
should be expanded to include class 1, and possibly class 4 and 6.


I realize that this may be "academic", in that perhaps most
FC equipment in the field may not use class 1 anyway... 


Thankyou,
Colin Kelly
Tropic Networks
Ottawa, Ontario