Users Guide

FIP Snooping

This chapter describes about the FIP snooping concepts and conguration procedures.

Supported Modes

Standalone, PMUX, VLT

Topics:

• Fibre Channel over Ethernet

• Ensuring Robustness in a Converged Ethernet Network

• FIP Snooping on Ethernet Bridges

• How FIP Snooping is Implemented

• Conguring FIP Snooping

• Displaying FIP Snooping Information

• FIP Snooping Example

• Debugging FIP Snooping

Fibre Channel over Ethernet

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) provides a converged Ethernet network that allows the combination of storage-area network (SAN)

and LAN trac on a Layer 2 link by encapsulating Fibre Channel data into Ethernet frames.

FCoE works with Ethernet enhancements provided in data center bridging (DCB) to support lossless (no-drop) SAN and LAN trac. In

addition, DCB provides exible bandwidth sharing for dierent trac types, such as LAN and SAN, according to 802.1p priority classes of

service. For more information, refer to the Data Center Bridging (DCB) chapter.

Ensuring Robustness in a Converged Ethernet

Network

Fibre Channel networks used for SAN trac employ switches that operate as trusted devices. End devices log into the switch to which

they are attached in order to communicate with the other end devices attached to the Fibre Channel network. Because Fibre Channel links

are point-to-point, a Fibre Channel switch controls all storage trac that an end device sends and receives over the network. As a result,

the switch can enforce zoning congurations, ensure that end devices use their assigned addresses, and secure the network from

unauthorized access and denial-of-service attacks.

To ensure similar Fibre Channel robustness and security with FCoE in an Ethernet cloud network, the Fibre Channel over Ethernet

initialization protocol (FIP) establishes virtual point-to-point links between FCoE end-devices (server ENodes and target storage devices)

and FCoE forwarders (FCFs) over transit FCoE-enabled bridges.

Ethernet bridges commonly provide access control list (ACLs) that can emulate a point-to-point link by providing the trac enforcement

required to create a Fibre Channel-level of robustness. In addition, FIP serves as a Layer 2 protocol to:

• Operate between FCoE end-devices and FCFs over intermediate Ethernet bridges to prevent unauthorized access to the network and

achieve the required security.

• Allow transit Ethernet bridges to eciently monitor FIP frames passing between FCoE end-devices and an FCF, and use the FIP

snooping data to dynamically congure ACLs on the bridge to only permit trac authorized by the FCF.

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