Fibre Channel, a family of ANSI standards, is a common, efficient transport system supporting multiple protocols.

ANSI -- American National Standards Institute Fibre Channel is structured with independent layers.

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FC0 Physical interface, transmission, signaling, cables/connectors

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OFC (Open Fiber Control) vs Non-OFC What is OFC? OFC is a start-up protocol implemented through handshaking hardware to allow the use of non-eye safe optical power levels between duplex links. Fibre Channel short-wave and long-wave originally implemented with OFC, to allow use of non-eye safe signal levels. Non-OFC was technologically challenging at the time because receivers required higher signal levels. What is non-OFC? Advances in receiver sensitivity and safety lasers allowed the laser power levels to decrease. The non-OFC design features signal integrity at eyesafe power levels. The simplicity, cost and reliability of non-OFC implementation exceeds its OFC alternative. Non-OFC-state machines are less expensive, simpler and more reliable because there is no 10-second time delay handshake per node and there are no additional hard/lower power lasers.

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FC1- The data link layer, which implements the 8b/10b encoding and decoding of signals Data is expanded using an algorithm that creates one of two possible 10-bit output values for each input 8-bit value. Each 8-bit input value can map either to a 10-bit output value with odd disparity, or to one with even disparity. This mapping is usually done at the time when parallel input data is converted into a serial output stream for transmission over a fibre channel link. The odd/even selection is done in such a way that a long-term zero disparity between ones and zeroes is maintained. This is often called "DC balancing".

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FC2 - The network layer, defined by the FC-PI-2 standard, consists of the core of Fibre Channel, and defines the main protocols

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FC3 - The common services layer, a thin layer that could eventually implement functions like encryption or RAID Name Server Provides a directory of N_Ports within a Fabric Database of ID, World-wide Name, Supported FC-4's per N_Port N_Port may query the Name Server to discover other N_Ports attached to the Fabric Alias Server Multicast

- Assigns alias IDs to multicast groups and hunt groups - Multicast frames are delivered to all N_Ports assigned to the alias ID
for the multicast Hunt Group

- A hunt group is a set of associated N_Ports attached to a single node - Assigns alias ID that allow any frame containing the alias ID to be
routed to any available (non-busy) N_Port within a set

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FC4 - The Protocol Mapping layer. Layer in which other protocols, such as SCSI, are encapsulated into an information unit for delivery to FC2

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Fibre Channel had been defined by the T11 organization to communicate in different classes of service. These class of services each have a variety of different properties, making each one unique.

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