ff.fa.01 and ff.fa.04

[Roman Rodichev]

My switch has no active ports, when I just run fcanalyzer, I see these frames:

ff.fa.01 <-> ff.fa.01

ff.fa.04 <-> ff.fa.04

Ethereal shows them as "unknown frame"

R_CTL = 0x20 (ELS)

What are those?

[inch]

Gday,

R_CTL is part of the FC-FS-2 frame header. The routing control portion of the frame defines weather the transmission is a FCP_XFER_RDY (data descriptor), FCP_RSP (command status) or FCP_DATA (actual data).

I guess there is two switches connected to each other? If so, there will be link exchange data going between them.

For more info, you can always check the FCP standard available ...

http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/drafts/fcp3/fcp3r04.pdf

Cheers

Andrew

[dmcloon]

loopback test frames that are always running in the background. They are sent from Sup to linecard to regularly check health of linecard.

mds# show system health statistics loopback

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Mod Port Status Run Pass Fail CFail Errs

1 16 Running 14507 14507 0 0 0

2 32 Running 14507 14507 0 0 0

4 32 Running 14507 14507 0 0 0

8 4 Running 14507 14507 0 0 0

-----------------------------------------------------------------

[jejoseph]

It is used for internal management between switches.

it is specific to MDS switches.