Filter
Top Products
8 Converged Enhanced Ethernet Administrator’s Guide
53-1002163-02
FCoE Initialization Protocol
1
DRAFT: BROCADE CONFIDENTIAL
NOTE
The Brocade software supports a maximum 24 LAG interfaces.
Flow Control
802.3x Ethernet pause and Ethernet Priority-based Flow Control (PFC) are used to prevent dropped
frames by slowing traffic at the source end of a link. When a port on a switch or host is not ready to
receive more traffic from the source, perhaps due to congestion, it sends pause frames to the
source to pause the traffic flow. When the congestion has been cleared, it stops requesting the
source to pause traffic flow, and traffic resumes without any frame drop.
When Ethernet pause is enabled, pause frames are sent to the traffic source. Similarly, when PFC
is enabled, there is no frame drop; pause frames are sent to the source switch.
For detailed information on configuring Ethernet pause and PFC, see “Configuring QoS” on
page 107.
FCoE Initialization Protocol
The FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) discovers and initializes FCoE capable entities connected to
an Ethernet cloud through a dedicated Ethertype, 0x8914, in the Ethernet frame.
FIP discovery
NOTE
This software version supports the October 8, 2008 (REV 1.03) of the ANSI FC Backbone
Specification with priority-tagged FIP VLAN discovery protocol and FIP version 0. This release
supports FIP Keep Alive.
The Brocade FCoE hardware FIP discovery phase operates as follows:
• The Brocade FCoE hardware uses the FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP). Enodes discover FCFs
and initialize the FCoE connection through the FIP.
• VF_port configuration—An FCoE port accepts Enode requests when it is configured as a
VF_port and enabled. An FCoE port does not accept ENode requests when disabled.
• Solicited advertisements—A typical scenario is where a Brocade FCoE hardware receives a FIP
solicitation from an ENode. Replies to the original FIP solicitation are sent to the MAC address
embedded in the original FIP solicitation. After being accepted, the ENode is added to the
VN_port table.
• Login group—When enabled, replies to solicitations are sent only by Brocade FCoE hardware
that have the ENode in the login group.
• FCF forwarding—The Brocade FCoE hardware forwards FIP frames only when the VLAN is set to
FCF forwarding mode.
• VLAN 1—The Brocade FCoE hardware should not forward FIP frames on VLAN 1 because it is
reserved for management traffic only.
• A fabric-provided MAC address is supported. A server-provided MAC-address is not supported
in the Fabric OS v7.0.0 release.