DELL FE100 User Manual

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A Fibre Channel switch fabric is an active, intelligent, and private connection of one or 
more fibre channel switches that provide high-speed, point-to-point connections 
between servers and storage devices. Using instructions that are programmed into 
the switch, the switches in a Fibre Channel fabric provide a point-to-point connection 
through inbound and outbound points from one device (sender) to another device or 
switch (receiver) on the network. If the data is sent to another switch, the process 
repeats itself until a connection is established between the sender and the receiver. 

Fibre Channel switches are linked together using interswitched links (ISL). These ISLs 
use two high-speed serial data connectors (HSSDC) or two subscriber connectors 
(SC) to connect the switches. Each ISL is considered a “hop.” While a Fibre Channel