Brocade SAN Glossary for Fabric OS v6.0.0

Brocade SAN Glossary 1/29/2008 Page 11 of 29
FFFFFD Well-known Fibre Channel address for a fabric controller.
FFFFFE Well-known Fibre Channel address for a fabric F_Port.
FFFFFF Well-known address for a broadcast alias-ID.
Fibre Channel (FC) The primary protocol for building SANs. Unlike IP and Ethernet, Fibre Channel
was designed to support the needs of storage devices of all types.
Fibre Channel Network Address Translation (FC-NAT)
A capability that allows devices in different fabrics to communicate when
those fabrics have addressing conflicts. This is similar to the "hide-behind"
AT used in firewalls.
Fibre Channel Router Protocol (FCRP)
A Brocade-authored standards-track protocol that enables LSAN switches to
perform routing between different edge fabrics, optionally across a
backbone fabric.
FICON
®
A protocol used on IBM mainframes; FICON support enables a Brocade
fabric to transmit FICON format data between FICON-capable servers and
storage.
FID Fabric ID. Unique identifier of a fabric in a metaSAN; the backbone fabric is
also identified using a unique fabric ID.
Fill word The primitive signal used by L_Ports to be transmitted between frames.
FIPS Federal Information Processing Standard. Publicly announced standards
developed by the US Federal government, for example, standards for
encoding data and encryption standards. See also KAT.
FL_Port A fabric loop port to which a loop attaches; it is the access to the fabric for
NL_Ports on a loop.
Flash Programmable nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM) memory that maintains its
contents without power.
FLOGI Fabric login. A process by which a node makes a logical connection to a
fabric switch.
F_Port A fabric port to which an N_Port is attached.
Fractional bandwidth The partial use of a link to send data back and forth, with a maximum of 254
Class 4 connections per N_Port.
Frame A data unit containing a start-of-frame (SOF) delimiter, header, payload,
Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC), and an End-Of-Frame (EOF) delimiter. The
payload can be 0-2112 bytes, and the CRC is 4 bytes.
Frame relay A protocol that uses logical channels, as those used in X.25; also known as
“bandwidth on demand.”
Front domain A tier of virtual domains between the translation domains and the edge
fabrics that allows FSPF multipathing to work as desired.
FRU Field Replaceable Unit. A component that can be replaced in the field upon
failure.