[rescue] octane question

[Dave McGuire]

On January 17, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> >   Faster than 100Mbps?  HIPPI or FC-AL.  At least there's some
> > intelligence to the design!
> 
> I didn't know that you could use FC-AL for networking.  Hmm.  That could be
> interesting.  Setup my file server to do routing, and have my main workstation
> connected directly to it via FC-AL, plus FC-AL drive also...

  You can indeed...The Emulex 8000-series FC-AL boards have Solaris
drivers that do both FC-AL and IP.  And besides...you talked about
connecting to big NFS servers.  Just SAN it.

> Does anyone actually make HIPPI PCI cards?  Well, yep.  Apparently Esscom 
> does.

  Yup, Esscom.  HIPPI is most common in the supercomputer and
minisupercomputer world, and a lot of supercomputers use PCI for I/O
busses.  HP Exemplar X-class, for example.  And folks are gearing up
for the new multi-gigabit HIPPI stuff.  NetBSD supports Essential's
PCI HIPPI interface.

      -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL         "Less talk.  More synthohol." --Lt. Worf