text: **4.6 Configuring local Fibre Channel port masking**
  
  This section provides information about configuring local port masking of Fibre Channel ports 
  in a clustered system. 
  
  With Fibre Channel port masking, you control the use of Fibre Channel ports. You can control 
  whether the ports are used to communicate to other nodes within the same local system, and 
  if they are used to communicate to nodes in partnered systems. Fibre Channel port masking 
  does not affect host or storage traffic. It is applied only to node-to-node communications 
  within a system and replication between systems. 
  
  **Note:**This section applies to local port masking only. For more information about 
  configuring the partner port mask for intercluster node communications, see 11.6.4, 
  “Remote copy intercluster communication” on page 519. 
  
  The setup of Fibre Channel port masks is useful when you have more than four Fibre 
  Channel ports on any node in the system because it saves setting up many SAN zones on 
  your switches. Fibre Channel I/O ports are logical ports, which can exist on Fibre Channel 
  platform ports or on FCoE platform ports. B using a combination of port masking and fabric 
  zoning, you can ensure that the number of logins per node is not more than the supported 
  limit. If a canister receives more than 16 logins from another node, it causes node error 860. 