CHAPTER
6-1
Cisco ONS 15454 SDH Reference Manual, R5.0
April 2008
6
Storage Access Networking Cards
The FC_MR-4 card is a 1.0625- or 2.125-Gbps Fibre Channel/Fiber Connec tivity (FICON) card that
integrates non-SDH framed protocols into an SDH time-division multiplexing (TDM) platform through
virtually concatenated payloads. This chapter provides information about the FC_MR-4 card. For
installation and step-by-step circuit configuration procedures, refer to the
Cisco ONS 15454 SDH Procedure Guide.
Chapter topics include:
•6.1 FC_MR-4 Card Overview, page 6-1
•6.2 FC_MR-4 Card Modes, page 6-3
•6.3 FC_MR-4 Card Application, page 6-5

6.1 FC_MR-4 Card Overview

The Fibre Channel Multirate 4-port (FC_MR-4) card uses pluggable Gigabit Interface Converters
(GBICs) to transport non-SONET/SDH-framed, block-coded protocols over SONET/SDH. The
FC_MR-4 enables four client Fibre Channel (FC) ports to be transported over SONET/SDH,
encapsulating the frames using the ITU-T Generic Framin g Protocol (GFP) format and mapping them
into either T1X1 G.707-based Virtual Concatenated (VCAT) payloads or standard contiguously
concatenated SONET/SDH payloads. The FC_MR-4 card has the following features:
•Four FICON ports operating at 1 Gbps or 2 Gbps
–
All four ports can be operational at any time due to subrate support
–
Advanced Distance Extension capability (buffer-to-buffer credit spoofing)
•Pluggable GBIC optics
–
Dual rate (1G/2G): MM (550 m) and SM (10 km)
–
Single rate (1G): SX (550 m) and LX (10 km)
•SONET/SDH support
–
Four 1.0625 Gbps FC channels can be mapped into SONET/SDH cont ainers as small as
STS1/VC3 (subrate), with a minimum of STS-24c/VC4-8c for full rate, and as large as
STS48c/VC4-24c.
–
Four 2.125 Gbps FC channels can be mapped into SONET/SDH containers as small as
STS1/VC3 (subrate), with a minimum of STS48c/VC4-24c for full rate, and as large as
STS48c/VC4-24c.
•Frame encapsulation: ITU-T G.7041 Generic Framing Procedure-Transparent (GFP-T)