Internet fibre channel protocol (SAN) (iFCP)
Internet Fibre Channel Protocol (iFCP) is a transmission protocol for storage networks for which draft standards are being developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force( IETF) and ANSI. Like Internet Small ComputerSystem Interface over IP( iSCSI) and Fibre Channel Protocol( FCP), iFCP uses the SCSI protocol, using a different physical connection medium with a different technology.
In iFCP, the medium ofFibre Channel is exchanged for TCP/IP connections, and the function of the fabrics and FC switches is performed by TCP/IP switches equipped with Fibre Channel interfaces. TCP/IP is used to manage the encapsulated Fibre Channel data packets.
The overall FCIP data frame is composed of an Ethernet header followed by the IP header and TCP header, the iFCP header, and the FCP header followed by the SCSI data. The Internet Fibre Channel Protocol is described in RFC 4172.