Fiber optic switch is a high-speed network transmission relay equipment, also called fiber channel switch or SAN switch. Compared with ordinary switches, it uses fiber optic cable as the transmission medium. The advantages of optical fiber transmission are fast speed and strong anti-interference ability. There are two main types of fiber optic switches, one is the FC switch used to connect to storage. The other is an Ethernet switch, the port is an optical fiber interface, and the appearance is the same as an ordinary electrical interface, but the interface type is different.

Since the Fibre Channel protocol standard was proposed by ANSI (American Industrial Standards Protocol), Fibre Channel technology has received extensive attention from all aspects. With the gradual reduction in the cost of fiber channel equipment and the gradual manifestation of the high transmission rate, high reliability, and low bit error rate of fiber channel technology, people are paying more and more attention to fiber channel technology. Fibre Channel technology has become an indispensable part of the realization of storage area networks. The Fibre Channel switch has also become the core equipment that constitutes the SAN network, and has an important position and function. Fibre Channel switches are an important part of the storage area network, and its performance directly affects the performance of the entire storage area network. Fibre Channel technology has a flexible topology, including point-to-point topology, switching topology and ring topology. For building a network, the switching topology is the most commonly used.

After the Fibre Channel switch performs serial-to-parallel conversion, 10B/8B decoding, bit synchronization and word synchronization and other operations on the received serial high-speed transmission data, it establishes a link with the server and storage device connected to it, and after receiving the data After checking the forwarding table, send it from the corresponding port to the corresponding device. Like the Ethernet data frame, the data frame of the Fibre Channel device also has its fixed frame format and its proprietary ordered set for corresponding processing.Fibre Channel switches also provide six types of connection-oriented or connectionless services. According to different types of services, Fibre Channel switches also have corresponding end-to-end or buffer-to-buffer flow control mechanisms. In addition, the Fibre Channel switch also provides services and management such as name service, time and alias service, and management service.