Fibre Channel Addressing and Routing Fibre Channel Addressing
Fibre Channel Addressing
• Point to point:
– Simple: 000000 or 000001
•FC-AL:
– Arbitrated Loop Physical Address (AL_PA) – 8 bits = 127 addresses per loop – 126 for nodes + 1 for FL_Port
• Switched fabric:
– Fibre Channel Port ID (FCID) – 24 bits = 16 million potential addresses per fabric
24-bit addressing: • Provides for 16,777,216 potential addresses per fabric • Several blocks of addresses are reserved for Fibre Channel functions, so the number of addresses available to connected ports is reduced to 15,663,104 (239 x 256 x 256)