SAN Design: March 29, 2001 3:18 pm
53-0001575-01 BROCADE Technical Note Page: 30 of 31
Topology As applies to fibre channel, the structure of the fibre channel network and the resulting possible communication paths.
There are three fibre channel topologies: point-to-point, fabric, and arbitrated loop.
Zone Set of hosts and devices attached to same fabric and having access permission, including RSCNs and user data, to
each other. Entities inside a zone are not visible to entities outside the same zone, even if the outside entities are in
another zone.
Meshed Topology Meshed Topology-- a network of switches that has at least one link to each adjacent switch. Fully meshed designs will have a connection from each switch in
the fabric to all other switches in the fabric. Other topologies are a specific instance of a mesh design.
Star Topology Star Topology-- central switch(es) with some or all ports used to connect to other switches; edge switches connect only to the center switches
Tier Architecture Tier Architecture -- a switch hierarchy of two or more levels with inter switch connections that assume data paths go from one side (hosts) to the other side
(targets).
TABLE 1. Glossary of Fibre Channel and SAN Design Terminology
Term Definition