Subject: Questions about FCIP

From: "Jon William Toigo" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 17:02:25 -0400

To any kind persons (and even unkind ones), I am looking for a few answers that I am not seeing addressed in standards docs on-line.  Hopefully, someone has a few answers to the following questions:

1.  Where does the FCIP protocol spec stand at present?  Has it been moved up the food chain for ratification?  If not, is there any thinking on when this will happen?

2.  Are there any reasons or situations in which FCIP might be considered preferable to iFCP?  What are its strengths?

3.  How is FC SAN node addressing handled in a multi-"island" SAN interconnected by FCIP links?

4.  How are IP performance problems handled in FCIP?  Is radical reconstruction required each time an IP network-related interruption occurs?

5.  Where will the heavy lifting of FCIP (the encapsulation of the data for transmission through the tunnel) be implemented?  On the FC switch blade? on an IP switch or router blade?  On some third party device?  Are their
different implementations?  Any benefits or drawbacks of each?

Thanks in advance.

Jon William Toigo
Independent Consultant and Author
[email-masked]