RE: FCIP: Comment 120

[Black_David@emc.com]

> > Besides, I don't see anything in the current document that prohibits
multiple
> > FC/FCIP Entity Pairs from sharing the same IP/TCP address/port - and I
believe
> > that is the right architectural approach.
> 
> In the Orange County meeting, the FCIP contributors were told that we
> had to stop relying on knowing the exact IP Address and Port to decide
> the end points of the FCIP Links. We were NOT told that we had to
> allow multiple FC/FCIP Entity Pairs to share a single IP Address/Port.
> In fact, I believe we were told that we could proceed using such
> an assumption.

While Ralph doth protest a bit much, I believe he has the better part
of this discussion.  It is completely reasonable to identify an IP
service instance as "that which responds when contacting TCP port X
at IP address a.b.c.d" - for example, there's only one http server
behind port 80, but there might be a different one behind port 8080.

If there's a NAT involved, the discussion gets a bit subtle, but
the principle remains - one opens a TCP connection to port X at
IP address a.b.c.d, and expects to talk directly to a specific instance
of an IP-based service.  I don't see any need to change FCIP to
allow multiple FC/FCIP Entity Pairs to share a single IP Address/Port;
the fact that multiple TCP connections to the same FC/FCIP Entity
Pair can share that TCP Port seems sufficient.  Having seen no other
participants in this discussion, I also believe that the rough
consensus of the WG is not to change FCIP in this fashion.

Thanks,
--David
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