ork (WAN), effectively expanding the scope and reach of their SAN. FIBRE-CHANNEL-TO-iSCSI BRIDGING The convergence of the Fibre Channel world with the IP network world requires a bridge SO users can maximize the impact of their investment. The concept of storage routers is no longer foreign. Enterprises and organizations can use their TCP/IP infrastructure to make storage devices accessible by any system from anywhere in the corporate network, thereby optimizing the use of this strategic asset-the operational data of the enterprise or organization-to anyone who has the need to know. TYPICAL APPLICATIONS FOR AN SNP The following are some typical applications for an SNP: Multiprotocol SAN switches can use SNPs to handle protocol mediation. For example, consider a group of servers sitting on a 1 Gigabit Ethernet or 10 Gigabit Ethernet network. These servers access data transparently on an iSCSI RAID array situated on another 1 Gigabit Ethernet or 10 Gigabit 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) 205 Ethernet network while targeting a legacy Fibre-Channel-based RAID array on a Fibre Channel network. Tunneling over the IP MAN/WAN Fibre Channel traffic between two or more geographically sep- arated Fibre Channels is easily handled by an SNP, which sits on IP adapters of storage routers at the edge of the different Fibre Channel sites (in this example). It would then encapsulate Fibre Channel traffic and decapsulate it from TCP/IP packets that traverse the MAN/WAN. A logical variation of the previous example can be to use a gateway between a Fibre Channel net- work and an IP storage network (1 Gigabit Ethernet or 10 Gigabit Ethernet for that matter), which would definitely require the embedded services of an SNP. With the proliferation of IP-storage-based SANs, a plethora 