Subject: Protocol Action: IP and ARP over Fibre Channel to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 May 1999 13:55:50 -0400

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'IP and ARP over Fibre
Channel' <draft-ietf-ipfc-fibre-channel-06.txt> as a Proposed
Standard.  This document is the product of the IP Over Fibre Channel
Working Group.  The IESG contact persons are Erik Nordmark and Thomas
Narten.

Technical Summary
 
Fibre Channel (FC) is a high speed serial interface technology that
supports several higher layer protocols including Small Computer
System Interface (SCSI) and Internet Protocol (IP). Until now, SCSI
has been the only widely used protocol over FC. Existing FC standards
do not adequately specify how IP packets may be transported over FC
and how IP addresses are resolved to FC addresses. This document
describes a standard way of encapsulating IP and Address Resolution
Protocol (ARP) over Fibre Channel and the mechanism(s) for performing
IP address resolution.

Working Group Summary

Much of the current document existed in a draft that was put together
for the BOF that formed the WG. A number of vendors had proprietary
ways of carrying IP over fibre channel, but interoperability among the
differing implementations had reached the point that it was felt that
a single standard was needed.  There was consensus in the WG for the
approach in this document.

Protocol Quality

This protocol has been reviewed for the IESG by Thomas Narten.