Fibre Channel is seen as an ideal medium to connect storage devices and to do local networking.
To connect to other local area network standards such as FDDI and Ethernet FCS routers are necessary. Routing will be done on the IP level.
For Wide Area Networking, ATM seems to be more suitable as it is well supported by the telecommunications industry. Therefore to have long haul Fibre Channel connections, FCS to ATM converters or gateways are needed. The FCSI-ATM specification is well underway, which makes that interoperability should not be a problem.
The following LAN and WAN routers exist:
The FCS 266/1062 Fibre Link System delivers tightly integrated,yet surprisingly affordable, routing/bridging among Fibre Channel systems and legacy networks.
A modular, multiport system, the FCS 266/1062 Fibre Link incorporates a powerful combination of hardware and software to deliver seamless support for a variety of network protocols and interfaces. The FCS 266/1062 Fibre Link makes it easy to integrate the power of Fibre Channel with your existing Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI, and ATM networks and backbones.
Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Corp. (NTT), Ancor Communications and Hucom Incorporated have announced that they have agreed to design, develop and market a Fibre Channel to ATM/STM interworking device.
Contact: Ancor - 15-Jan-1997
In 1995 ERICSSON Telecomunicazoni R& D Division in Rome and the University of Rome "La Sapienza" have made a design and performance study for a Fibre Channel to ATM converter. This work is outdated and no other work on this subject is in progress in this group.
The following is the abstract of the paper "Fiber Channel FCS/ATM interworking: design and performance study" from A. Anzaloni et al.
The Fibre Channel provides a common efficient transport vehicle for
existing channel protocols like Intelligent Peripheral Interface (IPI),
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI), and High-Performance Parallel Interface
(HIPPI), while offering the characteristics of a new framing type protocol.
The main focus driving the design was to find a solution to obtain
high throughput using hardware processing and careful protocol relaying
architecture between the FCS and ATM. A performance study, considering
the protocol relaying architecture and the FCS flow ontrol was performed;
the results show that throughput rates approaching line bit rates can be
achieved.
15-Jan-1997
Murray Thompson of the Physics Department of the University of Wisconsin is designing an ATM to Fibre Channel gateway.
This is information from 1995. I hope to get an update on this work soon.
Contact: Murray Thompson, University of Wisconsin, E-mail: thompson@WISHPA.physics.wisc.edu, Tel: +1 608 262 8509, Fax: 608 263 0800. - 15-Jan-1997
CERN - High Speed Interconnect
- FCS
Erik van der Bij - 15 January
1997 - Disclaimer