Buzz Issue: IP storage - a standard mess, 09/11/00

Error 404--Not Found

From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 403 (Forbidden) can be used instead. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address.

Error 404--Not Found

From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

spin headline

Here’s a look at 10 additional technologies circulating through the industry spin cycle.

By Network World Staff
Network World, 09/11/00

IP storage - a standard mess

Look out, a storage uprising is on the horizon. Established infrastructure giants such as Cisco, Lucent and Nortel Networks are teaming with storage vendors to standardize the transfer of stored data over IP. A slew of start-ups, such as Nishan Systems, NuSpeed Internet Systems and Pirus Networks, are joining in. They are proposing hybrid storage devices that switch, route and bridge Fibre Channel and SCSI traffic over IP networks.

Large enterprise networks that invested in Fibre Channel to route storage data and unplug LAN bottlenecks can use storage over IP as a way to bridge geographically distant storage-area networks (SAN) over metropolitan-area networks using dense wave division multiplexing. Midsize companies that resisted implementing SANs because of expense and the questionable interoperability of storage devices can use IP storage as a way to maximize investments in familiar technologies.

However, all might have trouble at first finding standards-based products. Gadzoox Networks and Lucent have proposed Fibre Channel routed over TCP/IP.

Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and IBM are pushing SCSI over TCP. SAN, Ltd. has proposed a data-link protocol used in ATM to route data over IP. Adaptec has introduced its own protocol, dubbed EtherStorage, that runs storage data over Gigabit Ethernet networks. And Computer Network Technology has teamed with Nortel and EMC to route Fibre Channel traffic over optical and IP networks.

By year-end, several vendors plan to introduce storage devices conforming to one or more of these proposed standards. They promise these products will be software-upgradable to any standard that wins out.

- Deni Connor

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