HP 2100 ER - Manual (Page 66)

A-8 Appendix A
Fibre Channel Overview
Working With Fibre Channel
Fibre Channel devices may use either of two modes: soft or hard
addressing. Hard addressing is similar to the existing SCSI approach.
Fibre Channel devices can only use the assigned address. If that address
is already being used by another device, the Fibre Channel device will
not respond to any bus activity. Soft addressing is similar to LAN
addressing, where the system determines device addresses. As part of
the addressing protocol, all Fibre Channel devices have one or more
unique addresses that are not duplicated any where in the world. These
addresses are provided by ANSI to manufactures of Fibre Channel
products.