DISCOVERY FOR FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNET DEVICES

摘要

Techniques are provided for performing discovery in a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) network. An FCoE Node (ENode) discovers the FCoE Forwarders (FCFs) connected to its network segment by transmitting a solicitation message to the multicast MAC address "All-FCF-MACs". All FCFs receive packets with this multicast MAC address including the solicitation message that announces the presence of the ENode. Each FCF replies with a unicast advertisement message that provides the ENode with a MAC address of the responding FCF. The ENode builds a list of the FCFs available on its network segment and may then establish a virtual link with one or more of the FCFs through a Fabric Login (FLOGI) exchange.