T11 is a Technical Committee (TC) under Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) INCITS (InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standardization). In turn, INCITS operates under the procedures of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). ANSI also represents the United States within the Joint Technical Committee 1 (Information Technology) of the International Standards Organization and International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC JTC 1). T11 acts as the US Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to Working Group 4 of JTC 1 / SC 25 (Interconnection of information technology equipment), along with other TCs.

T11 is responsible for "Fibre Channel Interfaces", and has produced standards in the Intelligent Peripheral Interface (IPI), High-Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI), Single Byte Command Code Sets CONnection (SBCON), and Fibre Channel (FC) families. Current areas of development are in Fibre Channel and Storage Management.

The program of work of T11 is further subdivided into formal Task Groups (TGs). At the time of writing three TGs are established -

• TG T11.2 - Physical Variants,
• TG T11.3 - Fibre Chanel Interconnection Schemes and Protocols
• TG T11.5 - Storage Management.

T11 and its TGs operate under the rules of INCITS Reference Document 2 (RD-2) - Organization and Procedures. Portions that pertain to TC & TG membership are summarized below for convenience only.

Generally, the requirements for membership in the TC and the TGs are identical, therefore for the purposes of the following text, the term T11 refers to both the TC and the TGs. Clarifications are included in italics.

Why should organizations become members of T11?

• To support the program of work of T11, and ensure that its standards and technical reports meet industry and user requirements and are created in a timely and efficient manner.
• Only designated representatives of T11 member organizations can cast votes at TC and TG Pleanry meetings.

• Voting membership in T11 is open to organizations directly and materially affected by the scope of T11 work that are willing to participate regularly and pay the designated service fee.
• In order to be in the voting member category, consultant organizations shall have to declare that their participation is not being funded by any organization already having voting membership.
• Organizations which are not domiciled in the U.S. can become members of T11, but when the TC is dealing with questions establishing the U.S. position on an international matters, participation and /or voting is limited to representatives of U.S. domiciled organizations.
• An organization with voting membership shall appoint one (and only one) principal representative and may appoint one or more alternate representatives. (The first alternate does not pay the membership or international program fees, but each additional alternate will be billed for these fees.)

• A representative of a prospective voting organization shall attend at least one meeting of the TC or TG.
• That representative shall attend the first of these meetings as an observer and reaffirm interest in the work of the TC or TG. (Note that there is a special provision for the first meeting of a new "group" (the formation meeting) by which all attendees can be considered members if so requested.)
• A letter of application on company letterhead, or a set of completed INCITS Form 005A/B, should be forwarded to the INCITS Secretariat, along with the appropriate membership fee. (The name, mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address should be included for each person, and this information should also be copied to the Chair of the TC or TG.).
• Membership with voting privileges becomes effective after receipt by the Secretariat of applicable fees for the membership year, and attendence at one of the next two successive meetings of the respective TC or TG, at which time voting privileges begin. Voting rights begin at the start of this sucessive meeting when the new member is recognized. (Observers have no voting privileges, but may participate in the business of the meeting. Attendance at ad hoc meetings does not count towards membership.)

• The principal and all alternate representative(s) or an organization shall be warned upon failure of the organization to:
  • attend two out of three successive meetings, in which case the membership shall be terminated if not represented at the next meeting; (Attendance is determined by the names on the attendance sheet, which in turn is recorded in the plenary minutes.), or
  • return two out of three successive non accelerated letter ballots if the next non accelerated letter ballot (identified by LB number) after the warning is not returned,
  • An organization fails to perform the above actions when none of the organization's representatives perform the actions.
• The voting membership shall be canceled by the INCITS Secretariat for failure to pay appropriate service fees within the time specified by the INCITS Secretariat.

When voting membership is terminated the representatives of an organization will be returned to Observer status. An organization that has had its voting membership terminated shall re-establish membership in accordance with the rules for obtaining membership above. If this membership is re-established within the same billing period and the organization has paid its fee, no new service fee is accessed.

How are memberships in the TC and the TGs related ?

Memberships in the TC and the TGs are essentially separate in that:

• An organization is required to separately qualify and apply for membership in each group
• An organization can nominate separate Principal and Alternate representatives for each group if necessary
• An organization's membership in each group can be lost separately as above

Note that this is currently interpreted as applying to principal and alternate representatives only i.e. Additional Alternates are always charged an additional fee.

Page last modified on January 1, 2004. Send comments on Web page to T11 Webmaster. Questions regarding T11 to Robert Snively.