Finisar Brocade Fabric Watch manual Glossary, Alpa, Ansi API, Asic ATM Awtov, Ber

Glossary

8b/10b	An encoding scheme that converts each 8-bit byte into 10 bits. Used to balance
Encoding	ones and zeros in high-speed transports.
Address	A 24-bit or 8-bit value used to identify the source or destination of a frame.
Identifier
AL_PA	Arbitrated Loop Physical Address; a unique 8-bit value assigned during loop
	initialization to a port in an arbitrated loop.

Alias Address Identifier

Alias AL_PA

An address identifier recognized by a port in addition to its standard identifier. An alias address identifier may be shared by multiple ports.

An AL_PA value recognized by an L_Port in addition to the AL_PA assigned to the port. See also AL_PA.

Alias Server

ANSI

API

Arbitrated Loop

ASIC

ATM

AW_TOV

Bandwidth

BB_Credit

A fabric software facility that supports multicast group management.

American National Standards Institute; the governing body for fibre channel standards in the U.S.A.

Application Programming Interface; defined protocol that allows applications to interface with a set of services.

A shared 100 MBps fibre channel transport structured as a loop. Can support up to 126 devices and one fabric attachment. See also Topology.

Application Specific Integrated Circuit.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode; a transport used for transmitting data over LANs or WANs that transmit fixed-length units of data. Provides any-to-any connectivity, and allows nodes to transmit simultaneously.

Arbitration Wait Time-out Value; the minimum time an arbitrating L_Port waits for a response before beginning loop initialization.

The total transmission capacity of a cable, link, or system. Usually measured in bps (bits per second). May also refer to the range of transmission frequencies available to a network. See also Throughput.

Buffer-to-buffer credit; the number of frames that can be transmitted to a directly connected recipient or within an arbitrated loop. Determined by the number of receive buffers available. See also Buffer-to-buffer Flow Control, EE_Credit.

Beginning	The disparity at the transmitter or receiver when the special character associated
Running	with an ordered set is encoded or decoded. See also Disparity.
Disparity
BER	Bit Error Rate; the rate at which bits are expected to be received in error.
	Expressed as the ratio of error bits to total bits transmitted. See also Error.
Block	As applies to fibre channel, upper-level application data that is transferred in a
	single sequence.

Fabric Watch User’s Guide Glossary-1