Definition:

Fibre channel is the speed and memory capacity of personal computers, workstations, and servers have grown, and as functions have become still more complex with greater trust on graphics and video, the requirement for greater speed in delivering data to the processor has grown.

Two methods of data communication:

This requirement involves two methods of data communication with the processor of I/O channel and network communication.

• The I/O channel is a direct point-to-point or multipoint communication link; the hardware is designed for high over very short distances.
• It transfers data between a buffers at the both source and destination devices.
• It typically manages transfer between processors and peripheral devices like disk, graphics equipments, CD ROMs and video I/O devices.

The network is a collection of interconnected access points with software protocol structure that allows communication. Using software a network naturally allows various types of data transfer to apply the networking protocols and to provide flow control, error detection and error recovery. A Fibre channel is designed to combine the best quality of both technologies, a speed of the channel communications with the flexibility and interconnectivity that characterize protocol-based network communications.

Fibre channel protocol facilities:

There are two types of Fibre channel protocol architecture, they are

• Types of channel-oriented facilities incorporated
• Types of network-oriented facilities incorporated

Channel-Oriented facilities:

• Data-type qualifier for routing frame payload into particular interface buffers
• Link-level constructs associated with individual of I/O operations
• Protocol interface specifications to allow support of existing I/O channel architectures

Network-Oriented facilities:

• Full multiplexing of traffic between multiple destinations
• Peer-to-peer connectivity between any pair of ports on a fibre channel network
• Capabilities for internetworking to other connection technologies

Channel/Networking approaches used for data transfer

The following requirements are used for data transfer

• Full-duplex links with two fibres per link, Performance from 100 mbps to 800 mbps on a single line, Support distance up to 10 km.
• High-capacity utilization with distance insensitivity, greater connectivity than existing multidrop channels, broad availability, small connectors, support from small system to super computers
• Ability to carry multiple interface command sets for channels and network protocols.

This transport mechanism based on point-to-point links and switching network, the communications supports simple encoding and framing scheme that supports a variety of fabric topology channel and network protocol.