Fibre Channel EISA Interfaces

EISA Fibre Channel interfaces exist from the following manufacturers:

Ancor Communications

The EISA Ancor Fibre Channel Communications Interface Module (CIM) is a 266 megabaud network interface card. 

Hewlett Packard

Hewlett Packard has a Fibre Channel interface for the HP9000/700 series workstations. This interface uses the 266 Mbps data rate. An IP and Direct Channel driver is available.

Pricing is around $3500

Tips on usage

To obtain the maximum throughput, the High Speed TCP/IP (RFC 1323, 85 KB) must be installed. The following note probably can help you. At CERN installing the RFC extensions made that we got an increase from 8 MB/s to more than 11 MB/s (November 1994).

> From raj@cup.hp.com (Rick Jones)
> Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
> Subject: Re: TCP extensions
> Date: 10 Nov 1994 17:26:52 GMT

> Stock HP-UX 9.X TCP does not support RFC1323. The RFC 1323
> extensions are shipped with the 9.X EISA Fibre Channel software,
> which one gets when ordering the EISA Fibre Channel card.

To furthermore increase the throughput, patch number PHNE_4854 must be installed. It will improve Fibre Channel performance for both thruput and (more significantly) latency. WWW users can retrieve patch PHNE_4854 from http://support.mayfield.hp.com/slx/html/ptc_get. html. HP customers should contact their local HP Response Center regarding other procedures. 

CERN - High Speed Interconnect - FCS
Erik van der Bij - 6 January 1998 - Disclaimer