Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop

hardware, standard (FC-AL) A fast serial bus interface

standard intended to replace SCSI on high-end servers.

FC-AL has a number of advantages over SCSI. It offers higher

speed: the base speed is 100 megabytes per second, with 200,

400, and 800 planned. Many devices are dual ported, i.e., can

be accessed through two independent ports, which doubles speed

and increases fault tolerance. Cables can be as long as 30 m

(coaxial) or 10 km (optical). FC-AL enables

self-configuring and hot swapping and the maximum number

of devices on a single port is 126. Finally, it provides

software compatibility with SCSI.

Despite all these features FC-AL is unlikely to appear on

desktops anytime soon, partly because its price, partly

because typical desktop computers would not take advantage

of many of the advanced features. On these systems FireWire

has more potential.

[Current status? Reference?]

(1999-09-12)