RE: iFCP: Responses to David Black iFCP Technical review comments

[Black_David@emc.com]

Sorry this took so long; I have two issues regarding the proposed
resolutions of my comments.

-- FC-AL support

The responses to Comments 5, 6, and 47 imply that iFCP supports both
private (ALPA addressing only) and fabric-attach loops whose members
are attached to different gateways.  I don't understand how this
can work because it requires forwarding FC-AL loop initialization
ELSs (LINIT) among gateways, but those ELSs do not have a usable
destination port (they're passed directly among neighbors), and
the ports involved in the loop have not performed either FLOGI or
PLOGI when the loop is initializing.  So how does a gateway figure
out whether and where to forward a LINIT that it receives?  I can
figure out how to make this work if only fabric-attached loops are
supported and loops never span gateways, but even that will need
some explanation.

--- Multiple Gateways

The proposed new text is:

             For either iFCP fabric type, an N_PORT may be behind more than
             one gateway provided:

             a) One gateway becomes the 'principal switch' and

             b) All gateways attached to a given gateway region coordinate
                the assignment of N_PORT IDs and N_PORT aliases such that
                each N_PORT has one and only one assigned address.

             The above will be added to the specification.

The implications of multiple gateways for the same N_Port on iSNS
servers and other gateways needs to be discussed.  This may be short,
because if the Port's Network Address is registered with iSNS as
a consequence of FLOGI, only one address will be registered because
FLOGI only occurs once, and hence all traffic to the N_Port will
flow through one gateway.

Thanks,
--David
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David L. Black, Senior Technologist
EMC Corporation, 42 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
+1 (508) 249-6449 *NEW*      FAX: +1 (508) 497-8500
black_david@emc.com         Cell: +1 (978) 394-7754
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