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You bring up a good question about SAN vs. LAN network integrity. There has been a lot written about the pros and cons of storage-based networks like Fibre Channel and IP-based networks, including Ethernet, from pundits on both sides of the fence. In general, storage-based networks including Fibre Channel have been designed with deterministic performance behavior and data integrity as primary requirements, while IP-based networks have been designed with good performance, low cost and standardization for mass adoption as primary criteria.
Storage-based networks are designed from an undersubscribed approach, meaning that, if anything, performance and data integrity are over-engineered, which has a higher cost. What this means is that it is possible for an IP-based network to encounter network congestion resulting in a dropped packet, thus forcing data to be retransmitted, impacting performance. Given the wide spread deployment and adoption of IP-based networks supporting storage-over-IP for mission-critical applications, including NAS, iSCSI, iFCP and FCIP, vendors have taken precautions to insure data integrity and protection should a packet drop occur. To learn more about storage and network interfaces, protocols and access methods check out chapter 3 ("Networking with your storage") and chapter 4 ("Storage and I/O networks") in my book Resilient Storage Networks.
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