Physical medium:

The main forces of the fibre channel standards is that it provides a range of alternatives for the physical medium, the data rate on that medium and the topology of the network are single mode fiber, multimode fiber.

Transmission media:

The transmission media alternatives that are offered under fibre channel consist of shielded twisted pair, video coaxial cable and optical fiber. Uniform data speeds ranges from 100 Mbps- 3.2 Gbps in point-to-point link distances range from 33m-10 km.

Maximum distance for fibre Channel media types:

The maximum distance ranges from 800 Mbps, 400 Mbps, 200 Mbps, and 100 Mbps.

• The maximum distance for single mode fiber is 10 km, 10 km, 10 km, 0 km.
• The distance for 50-micrometer multimode fibre is 0.5 km, 1 km, 2 km, 0 km.
• The distance for 60-micrometer multimode fibre is 175 m, 1 km, 1 km, 0 km.
• The distance for video coaxial cable is 50 m, 71 m, 100 m, and 100 m.
• The distance for miniature coaxial cable is 14 m, 19 m, 28 m, and 42 m.
• The distance for shielded twisted pair is 28 m, 46 m, 57 m, and 80 m.

Topologies:

The most general topology sustained by fibre channel is also known as fabric or switched topology. The fabric topology may also consist of a number of switches forming a switched networking, with some of these switches also supporting end nodes.

Routing:

Routing in the fabric topology is transparent to the nodes. All port in the pattern has a unique address. When data from a node are transmitted into the fabric, the edge switch to which the node is attached uses the destination port address in the inward bound data frame to determine the destination port location.

Five application of fibre channel:

The fibre channel protocol is independent and largely insensitive. It has five applications they are.

• Linking high performance in workstation clusters.
• Connecting mainframes to each other.
• Giving server farms high-speed pipes.
• Clustering disk farms.
• Linking LANs and WANs to the backbone of the fibre channel switch fabric.

Topologies, transmission media and data speeds may be combined to provide an optimized configuration that point ups the principal application of fibre channel.