Administrator Guide

6 Access Gateway Administrator’s Guide

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Fabric OS features in Access Gateway mode

Buffer credit recovery support

This Fabric OS feature is supported on 8 Gbps and 16 Gbps platforms in following configurations:

• Between AG switch F_Port and Brocade HBA port using Adapter v3.2 or greater firmware or any

device supporting credit recovery, This feature only works at the maximum supported speed of

the HBA port (8 Gbps or 16 Gbps).

• Between AG switch N_Port and Brocade fabric switch or cascaded AG switch F_Port.

It is highly recommended that you disable this feature on the AG switch before connecting to a

switch running Fabric OS less than 7.1. Enable and disable CR using the portcfgcreditrecovery

command. Refer to the Fabric OS Command Reference for more information on this command.

Specific switch platforms support this feature either in R_RDY or VC_RDY mode. In VC_RDY mode,

the buffer credit recovery is supported with fabric assigned PWWN (FA-PWWN), FEC, QoS, and

trunking Fabric OS features. In R_RDY mode, this feature is supported without FA-PWWN and QoS

Fabric OS features.

Forward error correction support

Forward error correction (FEC) is a Fabric OS feature supported in the following configurations:

• Between the AG switch F_Port and a Brocade 16 Gbps HBA port running version 3.2 or greater

firmware.

• Between the AG switch N_Port and F_Port on Brocade 16 Gbps fabric switch or cascaded AG

switch.

Following are limitations and considerations for FEC:

• Supported on Brocade 16 Gbps platforms only.

• Supported by Fabric OS 7.1.0 and later.

• Enabled by default.

• A Fabric OS downgrade requires FEC to be disabled.

• Specific switch platforms support this feature either in R_RDY or VC_RDY mode.

Virtual Fabrics support

Although you cannot enable AG mode on a switch enabled for Virtual Fabrics or enable Virtual

Fabrics on an AG switch, you can connect ports on an AG switch to Virtual Fabrics.

Device authentication support

Devices use authentication as a mechanism to log in into switches only after exchanging DH_CHAP

authorization keys. This prevents any unauthorized device from logging into switch and fabric by

default.

Authentication policy is supported in the following configurations for Access Gateway switches.

Regardless of the enabled policy, the AG port disables if the DH-CHAP or FCAP fails to authenticate

each other.