I vantaggi della tecnologia Fibre Channel si riflettono principalmente

(1) Elevata larghezza di banda, la velocità di trasferimento dati di 200 MB/s è stata attualmente raggiunta e 400 MB/s ha superato il test;

(2) capacità di indirizzamento ad alta-capacità e capacità di espansione della capacità, che può accedere a 16 milioni di nodi;

(3) Dati altamente centralizzati e condivisione globale delle capacità di archiviazione;

(4) La lunga distanza di connessione tra ciascuna coppia di nodi, il cavo ottico multi-modalità può raggiungere i 500 metri e il cavo ottico{3}}a modalità singola può raggiungere i 10 chilometri;

(5) Espansione e collegamento modulari;

(6) È possibile stabilire un sistema di servizio a disponibilità elevata o tollerante ai guasti- utilizzando switch in fibra ottica e relativo software;

(7) Può facilitare la creazione di sistemi di bilanciamento del carico e cluster di server.

Fibre Channel technology is a new technology developed by combining the advantages of "channel technology" and "network technology": channel technology is a hardware-intensive technology, because it is designed to quickly transmit a large amount of data in the buffer area, which can Connect devices directly without using too much logic; network technology is software-intensive because packets need to be routed across the network to one node among many devices, and network technology has the ability to operate a large number of nodes. Fibre Channel technology has been designed from the outset to combine the above-mentioned advantages of channel technology and network technology. Five independent layers are defined in the Fibre Channel protocol, from the physical medium to the high-level protocol transmitted in the Fibre Channel, which contains the overall picture of the Fibre Channel technology. The following are the functional modules of these five layers: ① FC-0, physical layer, defines the physical port characteristics of the connection, including the physical characteristics, electrical characteristics and optical characteristics of the medium and connectors (drivers, receivers, transmitters, etc.), transmission speed and some other port characteristics. Physical media are fiber optic, twisted pair, and coaxial cable. This layer defines how light travels on optical fibers and how the transmitter and receiver work over various physical media.

②FC-1, transmission protocol, FC-1 stipulates the encoding method and transmission protocol of 8B/10B according to the ANSI X3 T11 standard, including serial encoding, decoding rules, special characters and error control. The transfer encoding must be DC balanced to meet the electrical requirements of the receiving unit. Special characters ensure that what appears in the serial bit stream is a short character length and a certain transition signal for clock recovery. This layer is responsible for taking a sequence of signals and encoding them into usable character data.

③ FC-2, frame protocol, defines the transmission mechanism, including frame positioning, frame header content, usage rules, and flow control. Fibre Channel data frames are of variable length and addressable. The length of the Fibre Channel data frame used to transmit data is up to 2K, so it is very suitable for the transmission of large-capacity data. The content of the frame header includes control information, source address, destination address, transmission sequence identification and switching equipment. The 64-byte optional header is used for protocol mapping when other types of networks are transmitted over Fibre Channel. Fibre Channel relies on the contents of the data frame header to initiate operations.

④ FC-3, public service, provides public services with advanced features, that is, structural protocol and flow control between ports, it defines three services: striping (Striping), search group (Hunt Group) and multicast (Multicast) ). The purpose of striping is to use multiple ports to transmit in parallel on multiple connections, so that the I/O transmission bandwidth can be extended to a corresponding multiple; the search group is used for multiple ports to respond to an address with the same name. Improve efficiency by reducing the probability of reaching a "busy" port; multicast is used to deliver a message to multiple destinations.

⑤ FC-4, the protocol mapping layer, defines the mapping relationship between the bottom layer of Fibre Channel and the upper layer protocol (Upper Layer Protocol) and the application interface with the current standard. The current standard here includes all existing channel standards and network protocols. , such as SCSI interface and IP, ATM, HIPPI, etc.

Si può notare che lo stack del protocollo Fibre Channel è il vettore di trasmissione di vari protocolli di dati{0}}di alto livello, in particolare la trasmissione di dati SCSI e IP. Il processo di trasmissione del protocollo di dati di-alto livello come vettore è in realtà un processo di mappatura del protocollo di dati di{2}}alto livello al servizio di trasmissione di livello fisico dello stack di protocolli. Tra questi, il protocollo Fibre Channel più comunemente utilizzato è la mappatura di dati SCSI, comandi e informazioni sullo stato al servizio di trasmissione del livello fisico FC. FCP ha l'indipendenza per lavorare su tutte le topologie Fiber Path e tutti i tipi di servizi.