See Fibre Channel in Computer
A high-speed transport technology used to build storage area networks (SANs). Although Fibre Channel can be used as a general-purpose network carrying ATM, IP and other protocols, it has been primarily used for transporting SCSI traffic from servers to disk arrays. The Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) serializes SCSI commands into Fibre Channel frames and uses IP for in-band SNMP network management (see SNMP). For more about storage networks, see SAN.
Specifications
Using singlemode or multimode fibers, Fibre Channel can be configured point-to-point (FC-P2P), as a switched topology (FC-SW) or in an arbitrated loop (FC-AL) with or without a hub, which can connect up to 127 nodes (see below). Transmission rates up to 12.75 Gbps in each direction are supported.
Connection-oriented services
Class 1 With acknowledgment, full bandwidth
Class 4 Virtual connections, QoS,
fractional bandwidth
Class 6 Uni-directional
Connectionless services
Class 2 With acknowledgment
Class 3 Without acknowledgment
Node levels
FC-4 Translation between Fibre Channel and
command sets that use it: HiPPI, SCSI, IPI,
SBCCS, IP, IEEE 802.2, audio, video
FC-3 Common services across multiple ports
Port levels (FC-PH standard)
FC-2 Framing and flow control
FC-1 8B/10B encoding, error detection
FC-0 Electrical and optical characteristics
Learn more about Fibre Channel