ATTO Technology 2200R/D - Manual (Page 7)

ATTO Technology, Inc. ATTO FibreBridge Installation & Operation Manual
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ATTO Technology, Inc.
Fibre Channel Technology
Fibre Channel is a serial communications interface designed for the transfer of large amounts of data
between a variety of hardware systems over long distances. It is becoming a key technology for
applications that require shared, high bandwidth access to storage.
Fibre Channel provides a logical point-to point serial channel for the transfer of data between a buffer at a
source device and a buffer at a destination device. It moves buffer contents from one port to another,
without regard to the format or meaning of the data. In this way, Fibre Channel allows different upper level
protocols such as SCSI-3 to run over Fibre Channel hardware.
The Fibre Channel architecture is structured as a hierarchical set of protocol layers. Defined within these
layers are the rules for signal interfaces, serial encoding and decoding, error control, frame format and
communications protocols. Fibre Channel provides a range of implementation possibilities and purposely
isolates the transmission medium from the control protocol so that each implementation may use a
technology best suited to the application environment.
References:
ATTO FibreBridge Software User Manual
ATTO BridgeTools

Installation and Operation Manual
ANSI – Fibre Channel FC-PH
ANSI – Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop FC_AL
ANSI – Fibre Channel Protocol for SCSI FCP