FCIP & iFCP - Storage Technology Magazine
The FCIP and iFCP protocols may help you connect FC SANs over IP networks, but what's the difference between the two? These abstracts taken from each protocol's IETF drafts shed some light on the question.

FCIP:
Fibre Channel over TCP/IP describes mechanisms that allow the interconnection of islands of FC storage area networks over IP-based networks to form a unified storage area network in a single FC fabric. FCIP relies on IP-based network services to provide the connectivity between the storage area network islands over local area networks, metropolitan area networks or wide area networks. (

    Requires Free Membership to View

    When you register for SearchStorage.com, you’ll also receive targeted emails from my team of award-winning editorial writers. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest topics, the latest news and the biggest challenges you face as a storage professional today.

    Rich Castagna, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchStorage.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchStorage.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ips-fcovertcpip-11.txt)

iFCP:
The Internet Fibre Channel Protocol is an architecture and gateway-to-gateway protocol for the implementation of FC fabric functionality over an IP network. This functionality is provided through TCP protocols for FC frame transport and the distributed fabric services specified by the FC standards. The architecture enables internetworking of FC devices through gateway-accessed regions having the fault isolation properties of autonomous systems and the scalability of the IP network. (http://www.ietf-.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ips-ifcp-13.txt)

Additional Definitions:
July 2002: Inode
June 2002: Non-blocking architecture

This was first published in August 2002