After compiling my list of Fibre Channel related companies and their internet links, I was very surprised at the sheer number of companies that are involved with Fibre Channel in some way, shape, or form. This project took me MUCH longer than I expected, due to the extensive amount of information available on Fibre Channel. I found several companies that I had not heard of before, and several companies that were much more heavily involved in Fibre Channel than I had previously thought.
There are a number of companies making Fibre Channel adapters, several that make hubs or switches, but as far as I could tell, only 1 that makes a gigabit Fibre Channel Class 1 switch. That company is Ancor.
Fibre Channel is making HUGE inroads in the storage area. RAID storage boxes with Fibre Channel interfaces are at the cutting edge of this technology. Storage capacities in the terabytes are becoming more common, requiring the fastest interconnect possible.
According to a document on the HP site, uncompressed full motion video requires 270 megabits per second. 10 Mb/s Ethernet, 100 Mb/s Fast Ethernet, 25 Mb/s ATM, and 155 Mb/s ATM are not capable of providing this much throughput. Due to quality of service ommissions in the Gigabit Ethernet specification, GE may not be able to provide this level of throughput reliably. Only Fibre Channel at 266 Mb/s and 1 Gb/s offer this capability.
Craig |
