camp makes a legitimate business case. Special GbE server and storage network systems using TCP Offload Engine (TOE) hardware (which is discussed later in this chapter) are enabled by high-performance iSCSI devices, but they will also require the support of potential future changes to the standards, which translates to the need to reprogram some of the key underlying component technologies. iSCSI enables native IP SANs to be built, thereby enabling SANs to be integrated into one organization-wide IP-based network infrastructure. This has distinct advantages over the expensive and complex alternatives are encountered when creating and managing a Fibre Channel infrastructure. Large companies that have adopted the approach using iSCSI to deploy IP SANs in departmental systems, whereas a similar trend can be found in some small- and medium-size organizations and businesses. iSCSI may end up coexisting in the data center with Fibre Channel, but it will most likely not dis- place Fibre Channel in the near term. Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 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) STORAGE NETWORK PROCESSORS (SNPs) 199 technologies in the context of SNPs that will be needed to service the rapidly growing network-pro- cessing context. IP STORAGE IP storage is a generic term widely used today in the industry to encompass a network-computing realm that is based on the combination of protocols, technologies, and products that enable the deploy- ment of IP-based storage networks to execute and transport block I/O operations. The last point is crucial for distinguishing the differences between IP storage and NAS-based stor- age networks. NAS devices operate based on a file transfer protocol such as NFS or Common Internet File System (CIFS). Consequently, all NAS I/O operations occur at the file level, not at the block level as with SAN technol