Fibre Channel Addressing and Routing Routing and FSPF
FSPF Functions
• Link State Database (LSD) • Link State Records (LSR) • Link Descriptors (LD)
LSR LD LD LD ISLs Switches Fabric LSR LSR LSD
The LSD is a container for information about the fabric topology. The Link State Database contains entries for all active ISLs in the fabric.
Switches automatically notify each other of changes to the fabric topology using a protocol defined by FSPF. Switches exchange information about the fabric by exchanging Link State Records (LSRs): • An LSR fully describes the connectivity of an FC switch to other directly attached FC switches (ISLs between E_Ports and to B_Ports).
• An LSR is a set of information that describes the connectivity of all ISLs associated with one specific switch. In other words, there is one LSR for each Domain_ID in the fabric. If a fabric consists of five switches, there will be five LSRs in the LSD.