Command Reference Guide

Fabric OS Command Reference 675
53-1002746-01
portCfgFec
2
portCfgFec
Enables or disables Forward Error Correction on 16 Gbps and 10 Gbps Fibre Channel links.
SYNOPSIS portcfgfec --enable [slot/]port [-port]
portcfgfec --disable [slot/]port [-port]
portcfgfec --show [slot/]port [-port]
portcfgfec --help
DESCRIPTION Use this command to enable or disable Forward Error Correction (FEC) on a specified port or on a range
of ports, or to display the configuration.
FEC provides a mechanism for reducing error rates during data transmissions over 16 Gbps Fibre
Channel links. When FEC is enabled on a port, the sender adds systematically generated
error-correcting code (ECC) to its data transmission. This mechanism allows the receiver to detect and
correct errors without needing to get additional information from the sender.
The Brocade implementation of FEC is supported on 16 Gbps platforms (Condor3) and enables the
switch to recover bit errors in 16 Gbps and 10 Gbps data streams. The FEC encoding can correct one
burst of up to 11 error bits in every 2,112-bit transmission. The error correction covers both frames and
primitives. There is no loss of bandwidth or added transmission data rate overhead to the 16 Gbps FC
link.
By default, FEC is enabled switch-wide on all Condor3-based platforms. If FEC is already enabled on the
ports, enabling FEC has no effect. If a range of ports is specified, some of which are already in the
requested configuration, a notification is generated, and no action is taken for those ports only. All other
ports in the specified range are updated. Enabling or disabling FEC is disruptive to traffic.
When used with the --show option, the command displays the following information for the specified
ports:
Port
The port index number
FEC Capable
Displays YES if the port supports FEC. Displays NO if the port does not support
FEC.
FEC Configured
Displays ON if FEC is enabled on the port (default). Displays OFF if the feature is
disabled.
FEC State
The FEC state can be active or inactive. An active FEC state indicates that FEC is
enabled and actually running. An inactive state can indicate two conditions: FEC
is enabled, but not running due to some error condition (for example, FEC may
not be enabled on both links). Or FEC is disabled and therefore inactive.
Use the portCfgShow command to display the FEC configuration along with other port parameters. Use
the islShow command to view interswitch link-level FEC configurations. Use the portErrshow and
portStatShowhow commands to monitor data transmission errors. You should see a significant
reduction in CRC errors on FEC-enabled links.