FC-BB April 5, 2000 FC-BB Draft Minutes

Attendees:

Steve Wilson (Brocade)       Murali Rajagopal (Gadzoox)
Bob Snively (SUN)            Stuart Berman (Vixel)
Carl Zeitler (Compaq)        Kumar Malavalli (Brocade)
Elizabeth Rodriguez (Lucent) Arlan Stone (Unysis)
Norm Harris (SanCastle)      Ralph Weber (ENDL)
Horst Truestedt (TrueFocus)  Bill Collette (CNT)
Bret Ketchum (CNT)           Predrag Spasic (HP)
Mark Hamel (Compaq)          Kathy Yelshin (ACS Defense)
Greg Casey (Ancor)           Jeff Stai (Qlogic)
Ed Schurig (Interphase)      Naoki Watanabe (Hitachi)
Gary Robinson (EMC)          George Penokie (IBM)
Bob Dahlgren (SVP/Brocade)   Eric Vaughn (Bus-Tech)
Neil Wannamaker (Crossroads) Terence Kolleher (Pathlight)
David Neil (SAN Ltd.)        Scott Kipp (McData)
Craig Carlson (Ancor) 

The FC-BB agenda as accepted follows:

1) SWAN Presentation (00-234v0) - Rich Taborek
2) Proposed Flow Control Mechanism for FC-BB (00-231v0)
 - Elizabeth Rodriquez
3) FC-BB 4.5 Review and Comment Resolution - Murali Rajagopal 
4) FC-BB Letter Ballot Discussion - Steve Wilson
5) FC-BB2 SD3 - Postponed Until June 2000 - Steve Wilson,
   Murali Rajagopal

Rich Taborek made a presentation regarding a way to carry Fibre
Channel information over the existing SONET/SDH MAN/WAN
infrastructure. The main benefit is to share the common interface,
function, and optics between the SAN PHY and SONET/SDH PHY.

This is an interesting concept that needs to be revisited in BB2.

Elizabeth Rodriquez presented a simple flow control (SFC) mechanism
for FC-BB, in particular SONET. Since SONET is a very reliable
transport, the SR flow control defined in FC-BB is deemed to be 
too heavy weight. The solution is a simple flow control mechanism
that does not address error recovery based on a simple back pressure
protocol. While the proposal has merit, the committee ordained that it
was a bit late in the development process to include in FC-BB.

However, a compromise was reached wherein the null flow control mode
could be specified using 2 unused bytes in the BBW Header for PAUSE. Use of SFC 
is optional. David Neil pointed out that a special case of SFC with a zero 
value in the PAUSE maps to the currently Null Flow Control and hence it does not
make sense to use the term Null Flow Control. Murali said that he will think of
renaming the Null Flow Control. Addressing for SR Flow Control would make use of
1 bit in the last byte of The BBW_Header. This gets rid of the 8 bytes 
currently defined in the SR Header for addressing. This was proposed by
David Neil of SAN Ltd. 

This also provides a hook such that SFC could be included in FC-BB2. 

The LLC-SNAP header will be included in Rev 4.6.

In addition Murali indicated that Rev 4.5 was in good shape and all
comments received are easily addressed.

Murali agreed to complete Rev 4.6 of FC-BB which would include 
the requested changes. The committee then unaminously agreed that 
upon completion, Rev 4.6 be forwarded to T11 for letter ballot. 
Steve Wilson will request this of the T11.3 chair (Jeff Stai) during 
the T11.3 plenary.

Action Items 

1) Complete FC-BB Rev 4.6 With Agreed to Changes by 4/e 
   (Murali Rajagopal)
2) Arrange Letter Ballot for FC-BB Rev 4.6 by 5/1 (Kumar Malavalli)
3) Request an EtherType for Fibre Channel from the IEEE.
   (Steve Wilson)
4) Complete Proposed FC-BB2 SD3 (Steve Wilson, Murali Rajagopal)

Next Meeting

T11 Week in Boise, Idaho. June 7, 2000 From 11AM-3PM