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IP Storage Spec Shapes Up: Page 2 of 4

But politics, of course, is certain to enter into the equation. The group must decide just how many contributions to accept -- and we're not talking about bribes. The various storage vendors are allowed to submit their own proposals before an agreement is hashed out.

A couple of vendors are intent on having more specs adopted on top of the present charter. And depending on with whom you talk, that could either advance the specs or make them more complicated.

Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), the Fiber Channel market leader (see Brocade Sews Up a Good Quarter), has proposed a new time-stamping and framing format for FCIP that it hopes will augment the one now on the table.

Nishan Systems, a startup specializing in IP SANs (see SAN Surprise Jolts Market), has worked with Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: NT), Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), and several others to create an address translation scheme that would provide an alternative to using either the currently proposed FCIP tunneling or the iSCSI protocol. The proposal can be viewed at http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-monia-ips-ifcp-01.txt.

Brocade's proposal, which isn't posted online, was reportedly well received. For one thing, Brocade is one of the more powerful players in the SAN market, and it has been noticeably absent from previous standards efforts. It's even been called obstructionist, attending some meetings but blocking activities that were not perceived to be supportive of its ongoing market dominance. That's changed, apparently, and Brocade has been welcomed into the IETF fold.