Connectivity is guaranteed without congestion. Generic Fabric requirements are defined in the FC-FG standard. Switch Fabric characteristics are defined in the FC-SW standard. The topology of the Fibre Channel network is transparent to the attached devices. The Fibre Channel ports involved in a given link negotiate the means and nature of the connection or transmission.
All topologies are fully interoperable.
In a Fibre Channel switch topology, however, dynamic rate conversion is possible. The two ports involved in the connection simply negotiate the lowest available data rate for information transport while each link maintains its own line rate. If traditional networking components, such as switches and hubs, are added to the storage infrastructure, then multiple servers can be connected with multiple storage devices. Fibre Channel's flexibility allows for the introduction of a much more modular building block type of architecture, that can be tuned more toward specific applications. There are five layers, pictured in Figure 1.