Specifications

4 Getting Started with the McDATA Intrepid FICON Director

Figure 1-2 Example of World-Wide Names

1.2 FICON overview

There are a number of characteristics and functional areas that need to be understood in

designing an I/O configuration that exploits FICON technology. This section introduces the

basics of these areas for the FICON channel.

1.2.1 FICON channel architecture

The FICON channel architecture consists of the following Fibre Channel (FC) protocols:

򐂰 FC-0 level: Interface and Media

The Fibre Channel physical interface (FC-0), specified in FC-PI, consists of the

transmission media, transmitters, receivers, and their interfaces. The physical interface

specifies a variety of media and associated drivers and receivers capable of operating at

various speeds.

ANSI NCITS xxx-200x FC-PI T11/Project 1235D

򐂰 FC-1 level: Transmission Protocol

This is a link control protocol that performs a conversion from the 8-bit EBCDIC code into

a 10-bit transmission code; a unique bit-pattern is assigned to each known hexadecimal

character. Encoding is done by the N_Port when sending the character stream over the

fiber and decoding back to 8-bit code is performed by the receiving N_Port.

򐂰 FC-2 level: Signaling Protocol

Fibre Channel physical framing and signaling interface (FC-PH) describes the

point-to-point physical interface, transmission protocol, and signaling protocol of

high-performance serial links for support of higher-level protocols associated with HIPPI,

IPI, SCSI, FC-SB2 (FICON) and others.

– Fibre Channel - Framing and Signalling (FC-FS)

ANSI X3.230-1994

Server (Node)

WWNN1

WWPN11

Controller (Node)

WWNN3

Switch (Node)

WWNN2

WWPN31

WWPN21

WWPN22

WWPN12

WWPN32

WWPN23 WWPN24

F_Port

N_Port

F_Port

N_Port