Subject: RE: Last Call: IP and ARP over Fibre Channel to Proposed Standa r d

From: Wayne Rickard <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 13:49:11 -0800

I agree with Dave.  Open Broadcast Replicate (OPN fr) is a required behavior
of FC-AL devices.  Open Selective Replicate (OPN yr) is not required to
implement FARP.

Wayne

		-----Original Message-----
		From: "Baldwin, Dave" <[email-masked]>
		To: "'Raj Bhagwat'" <[email-masked]>
		Cc: "[email-masked]'"
<[email-masked]>,
		        "[email-masked]'" <[email-masked]>
		Subject: RE: Last Call: IP and ARP over Fibre Channel to
Proposed Standard
		Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 10:14:32 -0800
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		Raj,

		You state "This mechanism would accommodate stations that
don't support Open
		Replicates.". I strongly object to this statement. All FC-AL
devices are
		required to support Open Replicate to the extent that they
pass the frame on
		to the next device. If you are suggesting that a device can
comply with the
		IPFC standard without properly responding to a FARP-REQ
(MATCH_WW_PN), this
		will lead to serious interoperability problems.

		I don't have any problem with allowing Inverse ARP in the
IPFC standard as
		an optional behavior, as long as all compliant devices are
required to
		handle the FARP-REQ mechanism.

		Best regards,
		Dave Baldwin
		Emulex Network Systems

		----------
		From: 	Raj Bhagwat
		Sent: 	Monday, November 23, 1998 3:07 PM
		To: 	[email-masked]'
		Cc: 	[email-masked]'
		Subject: 	RE: Last Call: IP and ARP over Fibre Channel
to Proposed
		Standard

		I would like to submit a request to include Inverse ARP
capability to the
		IPFC draft. I think it will be very useful in certain
environments as
		described below.

		In a private loop environment devices typically do extensive
polling to
		discover other devices. As part of the discovery, they PLOGI
into each
		device and find out the World Wide Port Name & Port Id among
other things
		for each device. However, as part of the discovery, it is
not possible to
		learn the IP address of the device. If we could do this
somehow, then the
		device can build a table for IP_Addr to WWPN mapping and use
it later
		without resorting to sending ARP request through Open
Replicate.

		Inverse ARP is extensively used in WANs, especially Frame
Relay. It is easy
		to implement. The frame format is exactly similar to ARP
Request/Reply. Only
		the opcodes are different. The requesting station fills the
hardware address
		field with the WWPN of the target device and leaves the
protocol address
		field as zero. The request is sent to a specific station
that has the
		matching WWPN. The receiving station will fill in its IP
address in the
		target protocol address field and send the response back.

		This mechanism would accommodate stations that don't support
Open
		Replicates.

		Raj Bhagwat
		Gadzoox Networks

		>
		> -----Original Message-----
		> From:	The IESG [mailto:[email-masked]] 
		> <mailto:[mailto:[email-masked]]>
		> Sent:	Tuesday, November 17, 1998 10:31 AM
		> Cc:	[email-masked]
		> Subject:	Last Call: IP and ARP over Fibre Channel to 
		> Proposed Standard
		> 
		> 
		> The IESG has received a request from the IP Over Fibre
Channel Working
		> Group to consider IP and ARP over Fibre Channel
		> <draft-ietf-ipfc-fibre-channel-03.txt> as a Proposed
Standard.
		> 
		> The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks,
and solicits
		> final comments on this action.  Please send any comments
to the
		> [email-masked] or [email-masked] mailing lists by December
1, 1998.
		> 
		> Files can be obtained via
		>
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipfc-fibre-chann
		> el-03.txt