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Some terms used in the Fibre Channel industry are defined below. More information is available through the ATTO Technology
website (www.atto.com), the Fibre Channel Industry Association (www.fibrechannel.com), Cern (www.cern.ch), the Storage Area
Networking Industry Association ( (www.snia.org), the Fibre Channel Consortium (www.iol.unh.edu/consortiums, click on FC) and the
Ethernet Alliance (http://www.ethernetalliance.org/).
Term
Definition
ANSI
American National Standards Institute
BER
Bit Error Rate: a measure of transmission accuracy; the ratio of bits received in error to bits sent
bit
Smallest unit of data a computer can process: a single binary digit with a value of either 0 or 1
bus
A collection of unbroken signal lines used to transmit information from one part of a computer system to
another; taps on the lines connect devices to the bus
byte
An ordered set of 8 bits
channel
A point-to-point link which transports data from one point to another
CPU
Central Processing Unit: the portion of the computer that actually performs computations
CRC
Cyclic Redundancy Check: an error-correcting code which calculates a numeric value for received and
transmitted data; if no error has occurred during transmission, the CRC for both received and transmitted
data should be the same
device driver
A program that allows a microprocessor to direct the operation of a peripheral device
DMA
Direct Memory Access: a way to move data from a storage device directly to RAM without using the CPU's
resources
DMA bus master
Allows a peripheral to control the flow of data to and from system memory by block as opposed to allowing
the processor to control the data by bytes (PIO or programmed I/O)
fabric
A Fibre Channel switch of two or more Fibre Channel switches interconnected to physically transmit data
between any two N Ports on the switch or switches
FC
Fibre Channel
FCF
Fibre Channel Forwarder
FCoE
Fibre Channel over Ethernet
frame
An indivisible unit for transfer of information in Fibre Channel
frame header
The first field in the frame containing the address and other control information about the frame
full-duplex
A communication protocol which allows transmission in both directions at the same time
Appendix A Glossary
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