FDDI - Fiber Distributed Data Interface

FDDI is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard that defines a dual
Token Ring LAN operating at 100 Mbps over an optical fiber medium. It is used
primarily for corporate and carrier backbones.
Token Ring and FDDI share several characteristics including token passing and a ring
architecture which were explored in the previous section on Token Ring. Copper
Distributed Data Interface (CDDI) is the implementation of FDDI protocols over STP
and UTP cabling. CDDI transmits over relatively short distances (about 100 meters),
providing data rates of 100 Mbps using a dual-ring architecture to provide redundancy.
While FDDI is fast, reliable, and handles a lot of data well, its major problem is the use
of expensive fiber-optic cable. CDDI addresses this problem by using UTP or STP.
However, notice that the maximum segment length drops significantly.
FDDI was developed in the mid-1980s to fill the needs of growing high-speed
engineering workstation capacity and network reliability. Today, FDDI is frequently used
as a high-speed backbone technology because of its support for high bandwidth and
greater distances than copper.

FDDI Network Architecture

FDDI uses dual-ring architecture. Traffic on each ring flows in opposite directions (called
counter-rotating). The dual-rings consist of a primary and a secondary ring. During
normal operation, the primary ring is used for data transmissions, and the secondary ring
remains idle. The primary purpose of the dual rings is to provide superior reliability and
robustness.
One of the unique characteristics of FDDI is that multiple ways exist to connect devices
to the ring. FDDI defines three types of devices: single-attachment station (SAS) such as
PCs, dual attachment station (DAS) such as routers and servers, and a concentrator.
Dual-ring architecture:
1. Primary ring for data transmissions
2. Secondary ring for reliability and robustness
Components:
1. Single attachment station (SAS)PCs
2. Dual attachment station (DAS)Servers
3. Concentrator
FDDI concentrator
1. Also called a dual-attached concentrator (DAC)
2. Building block of an FDDI network
3. Attaches directly to both rings and ensures that any SAS failure or power-down
does not bring down the ring.

Example:-

An FDDI concentrator (also called a dual-attachment concentrator [DAC]) is the building

block of an FDDI network. It attaches directly to both the primary and secondary rings
and ensures that the failure or power-down of any single attachment station (SAS) does
not bring down the ring. This is particularly useful when PCs, or similar devices that are
frequently powered on and off, connect to the ring.

- FDDI Summary - Features

- 100-Mbps token-passing network
- Single-mode (100 km), double-mode (2 km)
- CDDI transmits at 100 Mbps over about 100 m
- Dual-ring architecture for reliability
- Optical fiber advantages versus copper
- Security, reliability, and performance are enhanced because it does not emit
electrical signals
- Much higher bandwidth than copper
- Used for corporate and carrier backbones

Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) provides a 100 Mbps optical standard for data
transmission in a local area network that can extend in range up to 200 kilometers (124
miles). Although FDDI logical topology is a ring-based token network, it does not use the
IEEE 802.5 token ring protocol as its basis; instead, its protocol is derived from the IEEE
802.4 token bus timed token protocol. In addition to covering large geographical areas,
FDDI local area networks can support thousands of users. As a standard underlying
medium it uses optical fiber, although it can use copper cable, in which case it may be
refer to as CDDI (Copper Distributed Data Interface). FDDI offers both a Dual-Attached
Station (DAS), counter-rotating token ring topology and a Single-Attached Station
(SAS), token bus passing ring topology.

FDDI was considered an attractive campus backbone technology in the early to mid
1990s since existing Ethernet networks only offered 10 Mbps transfer speeds and Token
Ring networks only offered 4 Mbps or 16 Mbps speeds. Thus it was the preferred choice
of that era for a high-speed backbone, but FDDI has since been effectively obsolesced by
fast Ethernet which offered the same 100 Mbps speeds, but at a much lower cost and,
since 1998, by Gigabit Ethernet due to its speed, and even lower cost, and ubiquity.
FDDI, as a product of American National Standards Institute X3T9.5 (now X3T12),
conforms to the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model of functional layering of
LANs using other protocols. FDDI-II, a version of FDDI, adds the capability to add
circuit-switched service to the network so that it can also handle voice and video signals.
Work has started to connect FDDI networks to the developing Synchronous Optical
Network SONET.
A FDDI network contains two rings, one as a secondary backup in case the primary ring
fails. The primary ring offers up to 100 Mbps capacity. When a network has no
requirement for the secondary ring to do backup, it can also carry data, extending
capacity to 200 Mbps. The single ring can extend the maximum distance; a dual ring can
extend 100 km (62 miles). FDDI has a larger maximum-frame size (4,352 bytes) than
standard 100 Mbps Ethernet which only supports a maximum-frame size of 1,500 bytes,
allowing better throughput.
Designers normally construct FDDI rings in the form of a "dual ring of trees" (see
network topology). A small number of devices (typically infrastructure devices such as
routers and concentrators rather than host computers) connect to both rings - hence the
term "dual-attached". Host computers then connect as single-attached devices to the
routers or concentrators. The dual ring in its most degenerate form simply collapses into a
single device. Typically, a computer-room contains the whole dual ring, although some
implementations have deployed FDDI as a Metropolitan area network.

Network topology
Network topology is the layout pattern of interconnections of the various elements
(links, nodes, etc.) of a computer network. Network topologies may be physical or
logical. Physical topology means the physical design of a network including the devices,
location and cable installation. Logical topology refers to how data is actually transferred
in a network as opposed to its physical design. In general physical topology relates to a
core network whereas logical topology relates to basic network.
Topology can be considered as a virtual shape or structure of a network. This shape does
not correspond to the actual physical design of the devices on the computer network. The
computers on a home network can be arranged in a circle but it does not necessarily mean
that it represents a ring topology.
Any particular network topology is determined only by the graphical mapping of the
configuration of physical and/or logical connections between nodes. The study of

network topology uses graph theory. Distances between nodes, physical interconnections,
transmission rates, and/or signal types may differ in two networks and yet their
topologies may be identical.
A local area network (LAN) is one example of a network that exhibits both a physical
topology and a logical topology. Any given node in the LAN has one or more links to one
or more nodes in the network and the mapping of these links and nodes in a graph results
in a geometric shape that may be used to describe the physical topology of the network.
Likewise, the mapping of the data flow between the nodes in the network determines the
logical topology of the network. The physical and logical topologies may or may not be
identical in any particular network.

Storage area network

A storage area network (SAN) is a dedicated storage network that provides access to
consolidated, block level storage. SANs primarily are used to make storage devices (such
as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes) accessible to servers so that the
devices appear as locally attached to the operating system. A SAN typically has its own
network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the regular network
by regular devices. The cost and complexity of SANs dropped in the early 2000s,
allowing wider adoption across both enterprise and small to medium sized business
environments. A SAN alone does not provide the "file" abstraction, only block-level
operations. However, file systems built on top of SANs do provide this abstraction, and
are known as SAN filesystems or shared disk file systems.

Benefits
Sharing storage usually simplifies storage administration and adds flexibility since cables
and storage devices do not have to be physically moved to shift storage from one server
to another.

Other benefits include the ability to allow servers to boot from the SAN itself. This
allows for a quick and easy replacement of faulty servers since the SAN can be
reconfigured so that a replacement server can use the LUN of the faulty server. This
process can take as little as half an hour and is a relatively new idea[when?] being pioneered
in newer data centers. There are a number of emerging products designed to facilitate and
speed this up still further. While this area of technology is still new many view it as being
the future of the enterprise datacenter [2].
SANs also tend to enable more effective disaster recovery processes. A SAN could span a
distant location containing a secondary storage array. This enables storage replication
either implemented by disk array controllers, by server software, or by specialized SAN
devices. Since IP WANs are often the least costly method of long-distance transport, the
Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) and iSCSI protocols have been developed to allow SAN
extension over IP networks. The traditional physical SCSI layer could only support a few
meters of distance - not nearly enough to ensure business continuance in a disaster.
The economic consolidation of disk arrays has accelerated the advancement of several
features including I/O caching, snapshotting, and volume cloning (Business Continuance
Volumes or BCVs).
SANs often utilise a Fibre Channel fabric topology - an infrastructure specially designed
to handle storage communications. It provides faster and more reliable access than
higher-level protocols used in NAS. A fabric is similar in concept to a network segment
in a local area network. A typical Fibre Channel SAN fabric is made up of a number of
Fibre Channel switches.
Today, all major SAN equipment vendors also offer some form of Fibre Channel routing
solution, and these bring substantial scalability benefits to the SAN architecture by
allowing data to cross between different fabrics without merging them. These offerings
use proprietary protocol elements, and the top-level architectures being promoted are
radically different. They often enable mapping Fibre Channel traffic over IP or over
SONET/SDH.

Compatibility
One of the early problems with Fibre Channel SANs was that the switches and other
hardware from different manufacturers were not entirely compatible. Although the basic
storage protocols FCP were always quite standard, some of the higher-level functions did
not interoperate well. Similarly, many host operating systems would react badly to other
operating systems sharing the same fabric. Many solutions were pushed to the market
before standards were finalised and vendors have since innovated around the standards.

Fiber Optic Networks

LAN vs. WAN Comparison - Difference Between LAN

and WAN
The main difference between LAN and WAN is that a WAN covers a larger area.
A local area network (LAN) exists in a house or a university campus, while a wide area
network (WAN) exists over many office buildings separated by a vast distance. The office
buildings in a WAN may be in different countries or even continents. For example, the
headquarters building may be in the USA, the regional office building may be in the UK,
and the branch office building may be in India. The workers in the three buildings use
WAN to collaborate with each other. The Internet can also be considered as a WAN. Let's
take
a
look
at
the
LAN
vs.
WAN
comparison
check.
Difference between LAN and WAN
The other difference between LAN and WAN, is the speed of the network. The maximum
speed of a LAN can be 1000 megabits per second, while the speed of a WAN can go up
to 150 megabits per second. This means the speed of a WAN, is one-tenth of the speed of
a LAN. A WAN is usually slower because it has lower bandwidth.
Computers in a LAN can share a printer, if they are all in the same LAN. On the other
hand, a WAN cannot share a printer, so a computer in one country cannot use a printer in
another country. A LAN does not need a dedicated computer to direct traffic to and from
the Internet, unlike a WAN that needs a special-purpose computer, whose only purpose is
to
send
and
receive
data
from
the
Internet.
Another LAN vs. WAN comparison is the cost of the network. A WAN is more expensive
than a LAN. It is easier to expand a LAN than a WAN. The equipment needed for a LAN
is a network interface card (NIC), a switch and a hub. On the other hand, the equipment
needed to connect a WAN to the Internet is a modem and a router. The modem may be a
cable modem or a DSL modem that is connected to a wall jack, while the router should
be configured so that it can handle the packets traveling between the WAN and the
Internet.
In LAN vs. WAN, there is a difference in the networking standard used. A LAN uses the
Ethernet standard, while a WAN uses the T1 standard. Before Ethernet, the protocols
used for LAN were Attached Resource Computer Network (ARCNET) and Token Ring.
The protocols used for WAN are Frame Relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM).

Another protocol for WAN is Packet over SONET/SDH (PoS), where SONET stands for
Synchronous Optical Networking and SDH stands for Synchronous Digital Hierarchy.
The first WAN protocol was X.25, while an advanced WAN protocol is Multiprotocol
Label Switching (MPLS). The hardware in a LAN is connected with 10Base-T cable
connectors, while a WAN is connected via leased lines or satellites.
Here is an explanation of LANs and WANs. A LAN is easy to set up, as you need to slip
the NIC into the PCI slot (for desktop computers) or PCMCIA slot (for laptop
computers). You also need to install the driver for the NIC. The NIC can be connected to
the
network
using
the
RJ45
port.
On the other hand, a WAN is very difficult to set up. There is often an appliance to
optimize the WAN. There is also a device to cache WAN data, so workers in the branch
office can quickly access documents. The router also has Quality of Service (QoS) built
in,
so
that
it
gives
priority
to
certain
kinds
of
traffic.
There are various topologies available in LAN and WAN networking. The most common
topologies in LAN and WAN networks are ring and star. The ring topology is a network
in which every node (every computer) is connected to exactly two other nodes. The star
topology is a network in which all the nodes (called leaf nodes or peripheral nodes) are
connected to a central node.