Re: Fibre Channel Network

[Rob Seastrom <rs () seastrom com>]

symack <symack () gmail com> writes:

> Hello Everyone,
>
> Have a few FC cards and a switch that I would like to use for backplane
> related packets (ie, local network). I am totally new to FC and would like
> to know will I need a router to be able to communicate between the nodes?
> What I plan on doing is connecting the network card to the FC switch.
>
> Thanks in Advance,
>
> Nick.

Classic FC is not "routed" in the sense that you're used to from IP,
although there is a component in the control plane of every FC switch
called a "router", which is perhaps where the confusion comes from
(the other three, FWIW, are address manager, fabric controller, and
path selector).

To answer the implied question, yes you can just plug them into the
switch (some configuration will almost certainly be required).  You
can also do a point to point connection between two FC devices ("back
to back" as it were).  The way we used to do it back in the old days
before switches was an arbitrated loop; in fact I still can't think FC
without thinking FC-AL.

-r