Dell 53-1002116-01 manual FCoE Initialization Protocol, Trunking, Flow Control, FIP discovery

1 FCoE Initialization Protocol

Trunking

NOTE

The term “trunking” in an Ethernet network refers to the use of multiple network links (ports) in parallel to increase the link speed beyond the limits of any one single link or port, and to increase the redundancy for higher availability.

802.1ab Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) is used to detect links to connected switches or hosts. Trunks can then be configured between an adjacent switch or host and the Dell FCoE hardware using the VLAN classifier commands. See “Configuring an interface port as a trunk interface” on page 37.

The Data Center Bridging (DCB) Capability Exchange Protocol (DCBX) extension is used to identify a CEE-capable port on an adjacent switch or host. For detailed information on configuring LLDP and DCBX, see “Configuring LLDP using the CEE CLI” on page 75.

The 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is used to combine multiple links to create a trunk with the combined bandwidth of all the individual links. For detailed information on configuring LACP, see “Configuring Link Aggregation using the CEE CLI” on page 65.

NOTE

The Dell software supports a maximum 24 LAG interfaces.

Flow Control

802.3x Ethernet pause and Ethernet Priority-based Flow Control (PFC) are used to prevent dropped frames by slowing traffic at the source end of a link. When a port on a switch or host is not ready to receive more traffic from the source, perhaps due to congestion, it sends pause frames to the source to pause the traffic flow. When the congestion has been cleared, it stops requesting the source to pause traffic flow, and traffic resumes without any frame drop.

When Ethernet pause is enabled, pause frames are sent to the traffic source. Similarly, when PFC is enabled, there is no frame drop; pause frames are sent to the source switch.

For detailed information on configuring Ethernet pause and PFC, see “Configuring QoS using the CEE CLI” on page 93.

FCoE Initialization Protocol

The FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) discovers and initializes FCoE capable entities connected to an Ethernet cloud through a dedicated Ethertype, 0x8914, in the Ethernet frame.

FIP discovery

NOTE

This software version supports the October 8, 2008 (REV 1.03) of the ANSI FC Backbone Specification with priority-tagged FIP VLAN discovery protocol and FIP version 0. This release does not support FIP Keep Alive.

8	Dell Converged Enhanced Ethernet Administrator’s Guide
	53-1002116-01