Brocade Communications Systems 53-0001575-01 manual Topology

SAN Design: March 29, 2001 3:18 pm

TABLE 1. Glossary of Fibre Channel and SAN Design Terminology

Term	Definition
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).

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