Arbitrated Loop Hubs
• Basic FC-AL configuration is a
physical loop
• Loop hubs allow a physical star
configuration—“loop in a box”
• Hubs provide basic management
features:
– Automatic port bypass
– Traffic monitoring
– SNMP events
• Hubs do not contain logical ports
A Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop hub is a “loop in a box”:
The hub creates a physical star configuration that implements a logical
loop.
The hub automatically bypasses ports to which no device is connected.
The hub does not “participate” in the FC-AL protocol; it is essentially a
passive device.
Most hubs support basic SNMP instrumentation, but other than that, they
provide no real “intelligence.”