Fabric Watch User’s Guide Glossary-3
Brocade
ZoningTM
A Brocade product that runs on Fabric OS and allows partitioning of the fabric
into logical groupings of devices. Devices in a zone can only access and be
accessed by devices in the same zone. See also Zone.
Buffer-to-buffer
Flow Control Management of the frame transmission rate in either a point-to-point topology or
in an arbitrated loop. See also BB_Credit.
Cascade Two or more interconnected fibre channel switches. SilkWorm 2000 switches can
be cascaded up to 239 switches, with a recommended maximum of seven
interswitch links (no path longer than eight switches). See also Fabric, ISL.
Chassis The metal frame in which the switch and switch components are mounted.
Circuit An established communication path between two ports. Consists of two virtual
circuits capable of transmitting in opposite directions. See also Link.
Class 1 Service that provides a dedicated connection between two ports (also called
connection-oriented service), with notification of delivery or nondelivery.
Class 2 Service that provides multiplex and connectionless frame switching service
between two ports, with notification of delivery or nondelivery.
Class 3 Service that provides a connectionless frame switching service between two ports,
without notification of delivery or nondelivery of data. Can also be used to
provide a multicast connection between the originator and recipients, with
notification of delivery or nondelivery.
Class F Connectionless service for control traffic between switches, with notification of
delivery or nondelivery of data between t he E_Ports.
Class of
Service A specified set of delivery characteristics and attributes for frame delivery.
Comma A unique pattern (either 1100000 or 00111 1 1) us ed in 8B/10 B encoding to s pecify
character alignment within a data stream. See also K28.5.
Community
(SNMP) A relationship between a group of SNMP managers and an SNMP agent, in which
authentication, access control, and proxy characteristics are defined. See also
SNMP.
CRC Cyclic Redundancy Check; a check for transmission errors included in every data
frame.
Credit As applies to fibre channel, the number of receive buffers available for
transmission of frames between ports. See also BB_Credit, EE_Credit.
Cut-through A switching technique that allows the route for a frame to be selected as soon as
the destination address is received. See also Route.
Data Word Type of transmission word that occurs within frames. The frame header, data
field, and CRC all consist of data words. See also Frame, Ordered set,
Transmission Word.
Defined Zone
Configuration The set of all zone objects defined in the fabric. May include multiple zone
configurations. See also Enabled Configuration, Zone Configuration.
Disparity The relationship of ones and zeros in an encoded character. “Neutral disparity”
means an equal number of each, “positive disparity” means a majority of ones,
and “negative disparity” means a majority of zeros.
DLS Dynamic Load Sharing; dynamic distribution of traffic over available paths.
Allows for recomputing of routes when an Fx_Port or E_Port changes status.