© 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. STORAGE NETWORK PROCESSORS (SNPS) NETWORK PROCESSORS iSCSI initiator manufacturers These include companies such as Adaptec, Alacritech, Emulex, Intel, HP, and Qlogic, which offer iSCSI storage NICs (also known as S-NICs) or HBAs. HBAs are used inside servers to enable the use of iSCSI for block-level access to storage systems. iSCSI switch manufacturers iSCSI has been designed predominantly to enable end-to-end IP- based storage networking. This is done without requiring intermediate iSCSI-aware switches. As a result, several companies such as Cisco, HP, and IBM are working on or already offer multiproto- col storage networking switches, which enable bridging between iSCSI-based server devices and Fibre-Channel-based legacy environments, and/or provide storage virtualization capabilities. iSCSI storage systems manufacturers These include companies such as Adaptec, IBM, and 3Ware, which offer native support for iSCSI in a new generation of storage devices. FCIP switch manufacturers These include industry heavyweights such as Lucent and Cisco (working together with Brocade) as well as several startups such as Akara, LightSAND, Pirus, and SAN Valley. These companies are working on or already offer FCIP-to-iSCSI bridging products. Network storage processor (NSP) manufacturers These include companies such as Platys (now acquired by Adaptec), Emulex, Silverback, and Trebia. These companies offer components (stand- alone as well as embedded and integrated) that enable low-latency TCP offload and IP storage pro- tocol support for IP storage target and initiator products. FCIP is a tunneling protocol that allows Fibre Channel tunneling through the encapsulation of the Fibre Channel transfers inside IP packets, which can then be transmitted over a TCP/IP network and infrastructure. Through this method, users with Fibre Channel sites can connect them over the met- ropolitan area network (MAN)/wide area netw