To: Greg Hull who wrote (19557 ) 3/9/2000 12:29:00 AM From: Douglas Nordgren Read Replies (2) | Respond to
RE: Brocade FSPF routing protocolToday Brocade announced that it will contribute its routing protocol, called Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) to a standards committee "that will facilitate baseline interoperability among Fibre Channel switches from different vendors". Note the word baseline. Brocade intends to release "certain elements" of its routing protocol. Fabric Shortest Path First, but it is their iteration of the Internet's Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol, in which nodes must continually inform one another of the status of the links to which they are connected. It is the key routing method that allows all Internet routers to navigate around unpredictable traffic jams. Understand that all routers/switches employ the OSPF protocol. The IETF and Ansi T11 groups will make the determination of whether Brocade's FSPF variation of OSPF has enough of a unique feature set that warrants the status of a FC Standard Routing Protocol. If their contributed elements are incorporated into a standard, Brocade will have no controlling proprietary grip on that open standard, just the credential of having been the company that made the standard operational. IOW, bragging rights (and they will do a lot of that).
