FICON is an I/O technology developed by IBM to connect mainframes to storage devices at higher speeds and greater distances than ESCON. FICON uses the physical layer of Fiber Channel (FC-PH) see Figure 1, as its transport layer and operates at the FC-4 layer, which specifies the mapping rules of upper layer network and channel protocols. FICON is just one of many protocols that can be mapped onto the Fiber Channel FC-4 layer, others include: SCSI, IPI, HIPPI, SBCCS type channel protocols, and IEEE 802.2, IP, and ATM type network protocols.

Certain organizations responsible for transporting this type of data are not always trained at testing the higher layers nor would they be tasked to do so by their customer because of the various protocol options at those higher layers. What is important to the transport groups are: Did the data arrive without errors? Was the CRC corrupted? Was there a violation in the idle character count between frames? Were there any bipolar code violations encountered? Were there any bit errors encountered in the past 12 to 24 hours? The transport groups deal mainly with DWDM networks and are focused on maintaining that type of equipment. The networks can be point to point or ring architectures since both topologies are used throughout metropolitan areas.

Testing the transport layer should include the FC-0 layer, FC-1 layer and portions of FC-2 layer The FC-0 layer l addresses the physical layer: the fiber, connectors and optical signal parameters. FC-1 addresses the transmission protocol encoding / decoding, and special characters used for protocol management. FC-2 layer is the signaling protocol layer, which is made up of a framing protocol and a flow control process.

The ConnTech 2000 model FC1 and FC2 tests the FC-0 up to FC-2 layers although not all the functions listed in the FC-2 layer are tested. The ConnTech 2000 model FC1 does not measure power levels, nor does it test flow control, nor does it allow connection to a fabric or a device since it does not support sequence or exchange applications. It does support the generation and monitoring of; bit errors, order sets, frame delimiters, frame transmission, and generation of primitive sequences such as:

Idles
NOS
LR
LRR
OLS

The ConnTech 2000 FC1 and FC2 allows the user to use a default frame header or define a custom frame header, which includes:

R_CTL / D_ID
rrrrrrrr / Source_ID
TYPE / F_CTL
Sequence_ID / DF_CTL / Sequence_CNT
OX_ID / RX_ID
Parameter

The ConnTech 2000 model FC1 and FC2 takes care of the frame setup, it creates the user defined SOF and EOF delimiters and calculates the CRC error checking bytes, which are then placed within the frame. User defined bytes, fixed patterns or industry standard PRBS patterns can be selected from drop down menus and inserted into the payload field.

Testing is supplemented with the capability to perform bit error insertion, CRC error insertion or bipolar code violation insertion. These tests allow users to test their own mux / demux equipment for error monitoring and detection. The ConnTech 2000 model FC1 and FC2 have a capture buffer used in conjunction with the ARM command to capture and present the expected versus actual received data error. This feature allows the user to see which bit(s) were corrupted in the frame that caused the error. The BER for a Fiber Channel link is to be less than 1x10E-12. The ConnTech 2000 model FC1 and FC2 displays the BERT test results continuously and is placed within the event log which is date and time stamped and can be saved in ascii text format for easy insertion into a customers test report.

Link distance can also be measured with the ConnTech 2000 models FC1 and FC2 with the touch of one button to initiate a link delay test. Link distance information is presented in actual time (seconds) and a finer resolution is also displayed using the internal transmitter clock ticks (x times 37.5 ns for FC1 and x times 18.75 ns for FC2).

FICON, as well as other protocols, use the Fibre Channel as the transport layer. Testing incremental point-to-point segments or end-to-end network tests with the ConnTech 2000 FC1or FC2 is easily accomplished and saves valuable time and money when validating your circuits.

For a copy of the ConnTech 2000 FC1 and FC2 data sheets and User Guide please visit our downloads page.

For pricing and availability go here to locate a sales representative in your area or contact Connecticut Technology Products, LLC at mktg@c2p.com .

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