Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 69
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Gateway links 4
FIGURE 8 Virtual Channels on an 8 Gbps ISL

Gateway links

A gateway merges SANs into a single fabric by establishing point-to-point E_Port connectivity
between two Fibre Channel switches that are separated by a network with a protocol such as IP or
SONET.
Except for link initialization, gateways are transparent to switches; the gateway simply provides
E_Port connectivity from one switch to another. Figure 9 shows two separate SANs, A-1 and A-2,
merged together using a gateway.