Jones says he hopes some of 4GFCs starkest opponents will follow suit. "Id like to think that with clear direction, some of these folks will see that the industry wants this."
Neither Brocade, Emulex, nor McData returned calls by press time.
There are many benefits to offering 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel speeds, say the technology's supporters. Most compelling, perhaps, is that while doubling the performance of 2-Gbit/s FC, 4GFC products are expected to cost about the same as lower-speed Fibre Channel devices. Meanwhile, 10 Gbit/s would be an estimated three to five times more expensive than current 2-Gbit/s products. And while 10-Gbit/s migrations will require replacing all existing 1- and 2-Gbit/s products, 4GFC technology is backward-compatible with lower-speed FC equipment. That means that when they're attached to 1- or 2-Gbit/s products, 4-Gbit/s devices will automatically run at those speeds.
In addition, supporters claim it makes sense to extend the 4-Gbit/s effort already under way on the disk-drive side to the SAN fabric. "There was a lot of discussion as 4-Gbit/s disk drives were being deployed," Jones says. "People were saying, 'Weve got all the pieces. Why not make a fabric out of it?' " [Ed. note: Coco Chanel couldn't have said it better.]
So why was there so much resistance to moving to the new technology in the first place? QLogic's Berry says he thinks many people didnt really understand all the issues. "There was a herd mentality that wasnt necessarily based in user feedback," he says. "Its amazing how many people were not aware that 10 Gbit/s wasnt compatible with 1 Gbit/s."
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