Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking. It has become the standard connection type for storage area networks (SAN) in enterprise storage. The Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) is a transport protocol that is used to carry Small Computer System Interconnect (SCSI) commands over Fibre Channel networks. Fibre Channel standards have been promulgated by the T11 Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS).
U.S. Patent Application Publication 2006/0098681, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes methods and devices for implementing a Low Latency Ethernet (“LLE”) solution, also referred to as a Data Center Ethernet (“DCE”) solution, which is said to provide a high bandwidth, low latency network for carrying Ethernet and storage traffic. One aspect of the description relates to a method for transforming FC frames into a format suitable for transport on an Ethernet network.
InfiniBand™ (IB) is a switched-fabric communications link primarily used in high-performance computing. It has been standardized by the InfiniBand Trade Association. Computing devices (host processors and peripherals) connect to the IB fabric via a network interface adapter, which is referred to in IB parlance as a channel adapter. Host processors (or hosts) use a host channel adapter (HCA), while peripheral devices use a target channel adapter (TCA).