One document matched: draft-ietf-ipfc-fcoverip-00.txt

IPFC Working Group                 M. Rajagopal, R. Bhagwat, W. Rickard
INTERNET-DRAFT                                        Gadzoox  Networks
<draft-ietf-ipfc-fcoverip-00.txt>                   Elizabeth Rodriguez
(Expires September 10, 2000)                        Lucent Technologies



                               Fibre Channel Over IP

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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1. Abstract

   Fibre Channel(FC) is a dominant technology used in Storage Area
   networks (SAN).  The purpose of this draft specification is to
   specify a standard way of encapsulating FC frames over IP and to
   describe mechanisms that allow islands of FC SANs to interoperate
   over IP networks. FC over IP relies on IP network services to provide
   the connectivity between the SAN islands. The FC over IP
   specification is independent of the link level transport protocol
   such as Gigabit Ethernet, SONET, ATM, or DWDM, used for carrying the
   IP packets.


2. Conventions used in this document

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [2].


3. Introduction

   Fibre Channel (FC) is a gigabit speed networking technology primarily
   used for Storage Area Networking (SAN). FC is standardized under



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   American National Standard for Information Systems of the National
   Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS) and has
   specified a number of documents describing its protocols, operations,
   and services.

   With the rapid growth of IP-based networks, it has become important
   to specify a standard way to encapsulate FC frames over IP. The
   primary motivation for this specification therefore is to use the
   existing IP infrastructure to carry FC over LANs, MANs, and WANs.

   FC Standards [3] describes the operation and interaction of FC
   Switches. Two distinct levels of switch interconnections are
   specified. Autonomous Regions (AR) are defined to allow clusters of
   FC Switches to be connected across a backbone network called a DMP-
   backbone.  An AR is administratively defined with each AR
   encompassing one or more FC Address Domains.

   The DMP-backbone network is formed from one or more Backbone Switches
   (BSW) that run the DMP routing and switch control protocol. DMP is
   based on OSPF. Currently, the DMP protocol is specified for only
   point-to-point links. But a BSW may have a number of such point-to-
   point neighbors.

   In general, there are 3 main concerns when FC is transported over any
   packet or physical technologies:

        - Security
        - Data Integrity (loss, out-of-order)
        - Performance (QoS)

   This draft addresses the above concerns when IP is used as the packet
   media to carry FC utilizing its underlying network services. As such,
   any of the protocols that make the IP transport secure (e.g., IPsec,
   VPN) or boost the performance of IP networks (e.g., DiffServ) may be
   relevant.

4. FC over IP Proposed Overview

   This document specifies an IP encapsulation mechanism for the FC
   frames traversing the DMP backbone.  Therefore, it specifically
   applies to the FC Switching configuration with multiple ARs.

   As specified in [3], native FC frames traverse the DMP backbone
   between DMP neighbors on point-to-point links.  In this
   specification, the native FC frames are first encapsulated which then
   traverse the IP network. From the perspective of each BSW, all remote
   BSWs would appear to be connected to the BSW on point-to-point links.
   The DMP routing protocol computation would make the network topology
   appear as a fully connected mesh.

   Encapsulated FC frames are routed on the IP network according to the
   normal IP routing procedures. In this mode, the DMP routing protocol
   lays over the IP network and has no knowledge of the underlying IP
   protocol or the underlying technology that carries the IP datagrams.



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   In the beginning, every BSW is configured with an IP address and a
   list of all participating BSW IP addresses is known.

   FC addresses and IP addresses associations of all BSWs can be
   statically configured or dynamically learnt from the DMP routing
   protocol.

   New BSWs are allowed to join and it is assumed that the joining BSW
   has knowledge of the IP addresses of the BSWs currently in operation.

   The following are placeholders for future topics in this document:

5. FC IP Encapsulation

6. FC and IP Address Association Mechanism

7. BSW Joins

8. Security Considerations

9. Data Integrity Considerations

10. Performance Considerations

11. References:
         1  Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3",
     BCP 9, RFC 2026,
            October 1996.

         2  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
     Requirement Levels",
            BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997

         3 NCITS 321-200x (ANSI) T11/Project 1305-D/Rev4.3 "Fibre
     Channel
           Switch-Fabric-2", March 2000 (www.t11.org)

12. Acknowledgments


13. Authors' Addresses

     Murali Rajagopal
     Gadzoox Networks, Inc.
     711 Kimberly Avenue, Suite 100
     Placentia, CA 92870

     Phone: +1 714 577 6805
     Fax: +1 714 524 8508
     Email: murali@gadzoox.com

     Raj Bhagwat
     Gadzoox Networks, Inc.
     711 Kimberly Avenue, Suite 100



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     Placentia, CA 92870

     Phone: +1 714 577 6806
     Fax: +1 714 524 8508
     Email: raj@gadzoox.com

     Wayne Rickard
     Gadzoox Networks, Inc.
     711 Kimberly Avenue, Suite 100
     Placentia, CA 92870

     Phone: +1 714 577 6803
     Fax: +1 714 524 8508
     Email: wayne@gadzoox.com


     Elizabeth G. Rodriguez
     Lucent Technologies
     1202 Richardson Drive, Suite 210

     Richardson, TX 75080
     Phone: 972-231-0672
     Email: egrodriguez@lucent.com


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     [draft-ietf-ipfc-fcoverip-00.txt] [This INTERNET DRAFT expires on
     September 10, 2000]














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