Subject: Re: FCIP -03 comments

From: Ralph Weber <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 19:47:31 -0500

David,

On 7/18 you wrote:

..snip..

> -- Section 6.4
>
>    An FC Fabric to IP Network interface product SHALL
>    contain one FCIP Entity for each IP Address assigned to the product.
>
> This looks overspecified for a couple of reasons -- it prevents
> multiple FCIP entities on different TCP ports at the same IP
> address and it appears to force implementation of an FCIP entity
> on an interface intended solely for management traffic.  Needless
> to say, this is overspecified - I'm guessing that the real requirement
> is that an FCIP entity MUST NOT span multiple IP addresses, but
> more than one FCIP entity MAY share an IP address by using
> different TCP ports.  This has some slight effects on wording
> elsewhere, but I fail to see the reason for forbidding two FCIP
> entities behind a single IP address.

..snip..

I responded by promising to put this question to the FCIP authors.
Here is their response (more or less faithfully transcribed, owing 
for interpretations and flourishes).

The statement that ..."there SHALL be one FCIP Entity for each IP
Address assigned to the product..." correctly reflects the intentions
of the FCIP authors.  The requirement represents the results of about
three hours of debate among the authors that occurred during the
face-to-face meeting in Denver in June.

The agreed opinion is that, particularly in the manually configured
case, the IP Address represents the FCIP Entity and as such having
multiple FCIP Entities sharing an IP Address causes confusion.

A couple of the FCIP authors have volunteered to walk you through
their PowerPoint, Visio, and PDF presentations on the subject in
Orange County, but they have refused to convert their drawings to 
ASCII stick figures.

The FCIP Authors have requested that you consider viewing their
non-ASCII presentations personally and offline.  Should you wish
to subject the meeting to this agony (I speak from experience here),
please be sure the FCIP TD is notified of the agenda change.

Thanks.

Ralph...