Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP or FC/IP, also known as Fibre Channel tunneling or storage tunneling) is an
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.
IP h ...
(IP) created by the
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...
(IETF) for storage technology.
An FCIP entity functions to encapsulate
Fibre Channel
Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data cen ...
frames and forward them over an IP network. FCIP entities are peers that communicate using TCP/IP.
FCIP technology overcomes the distance limitations of native Fibre Channel, enabling geographically distributed
storage area network
A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from serve ...
s to be connected using existing IP infrastructure, while keeping fabric services intact. The Fibre Channel Fabric and its devices remain unaware of the presence of the IP Network.
Similar protocols
A competing technology to FCIP is known as
iFCP
Internet Fibre Channel Protocol (iFCP) is a gateway-to-gateway network protocol standard that provides Fibre Channel fabric functionality to Fibre Channel devices over an IP network. It is officially ratified by the Internet Engineering Task Fo ...
. It uses routing instead of tunneling to enable connectivity of Fibre Channel networks over IP.
See also
*
IP over Fibre Channel (IPFC)
*
Internet Fibre Channel Protocol (iFCP)
*
Internet SCSI (iSCSI)
*
Fibre Channel over Ethernet
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a computer network technology that encapsulates Fibre Channel frames over Ethernet networks. This allows Fibre Channel to use 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks (or higher speeds) while preserving the Fibre Channel ...
References
Internet protocols
Fibre Channel
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