fabric
In Fibre Channel, a fabric is a star-shaped configuration with one or more FC switches. In this topology, several computer systems and storage devices can be interconnected. Data can be transferred between the different computers and storage devices simultaneously.
In the fabric topology, data is physically transferred between any two N ports of the FC switches. Each port in a node, an N_Port or NL_Port, is connected to the fabric system via a link. The ports on a fabric switch are called F_Ports and can communicate with any other F_Port through the fabric system.
The FC switches that make up the fabric have routing functionality. A fabric system allows dynamic couplings between two nodes via the ports connected to this system.