new to networking/SANS please help

N3tWrkNut

So I was in a meeting the other day and we were talking about FC over IP and FC ove E. When my boss asked a question about the FCoIP she stated Fiber Channel is IP. Am I mistaken? Fiber Channel is not IP or is it and I am just confused???? I understand you have IP stuff like icmp then you have TCP and UDP which is at another layer and Fiber Channel is like TCP it is a type of transport? Am I way off in left field?

veritas_libertas

Maybe this will help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre_Channel

Fiber Channel over IP (FCIP) - Cisco Systems

N3tWrkNut

I read those. Thanks....I was told at one point to be careful with WIKI. Anyway, so as I understand it Fiber Channel is a transport protocol layer 4 that gets encapulated in IP so that it can run over IP. Am I understanding it right?? My brain is in overdrive today and for whatever reason I just can't seem to wrap my brain around it.

I appreciate your help.

veritas_libertas

N3tWrkNut wrote: »

I read those. Thanks....I was told at one point to be careful with WIKI. Anyway, so as I understand it Fiber Channel is a transport protocol layer 4 that gets encapulated in IP so that it can run over IP. Am I understanding it right?? My brain is in overdrive today and for whatever reason I just can't seem to wrap my brain around it.

I appreciate your help.

That would be the way I am reading it. I actually was unfamiliar FCIP until you asked about it.

N3tWrkNut

Thanks for your help. After some reading I finally realized that FC over IP is just the upper layer protocol (Fiber Channel) and it gets encapsulated in an IP header to go over the layer 3 network. Totally makes sense now.

Claymoore

N3tWrkNut wrote: »

Thanks for your help. After some reading I finally realized that FC over IP is just the upper layer protocol (Fiber Channel) and it gets encapsulated in an IP header to go over the layer 3 network. Totally makes sense now.

It's commonly used to encapsulate the FC so that it can be routed across a regular IP WAN for replication to another SAN at a remote data center.

Fugazi1000

Be aware that although you can carry Fibre Channel a much further distance by using an IP based network, you will incur additional latency. FC is a very predictable technology. IP over anything less so. Use CoS/QoS on your IP network and realise that things like synchronous replication will either not work or introduce a performance hit on your application (if you are using such a thing).

N3tWrkNut

Thanks all for your help. I understand it much better now.