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Fibre Channel
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Fibre Channel is traditionally held to be an optical point-to-point communication method. Recent enhancements to the standard include support, for copper implementations and mufti-drop loops of devices. These advancements allow Fibre Channel to be used as a storage interface, bringing new levels of performance and functionality to disc storage subsystems. The technical definition of the new enhancement is Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FCAL). It is a high speed, industry-standard interface that will be a key technology for making the fabled information superhighway a reality.
Interface Fibre Channel - Arbitrated Loop
Protocol SCSI-3
Speed 100 MB/s
Connectivity 126 devices
Distance 30m using copper
(Up to 1 0 km using fibre optics)
Features Dual porting
Array support
(hot plugging)
(array commands built into drive)
Fibre Channel Loop in Wide Area Network
Fibre Channel is also much more than a disc interface. It will be widely used for networking and connecting to WAN links. Moreover, all its supported protocols can be used on the same facility at the same time. Thus, a wokstation on a loop of fibre channel devices can talk to storage devices using SCSI and to other systems using TCP/IP, sharing a communication path as fast as most computer backplanes.
The applications and supported protocols for Fibre Channel include:
Disc SCSI-3
System Interconnect HIPPI
Tape SCSI-3, IPI-3
LAN IP
Video, WAN ATM (in process)
Fibre Channel is an interconnect method that will link large numbers of data processing equipment throughout a
company and do it at a level of performance that rivals a mainframe's internal speeds.
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