Is Ultra 160 SCSI better than fibre channel?
• Answer: This is a discussion that will go on for some time and there is no simple answer. It depends on the application. At least until now, fibre channel (FC) implementations of SCSI have been FC-AL or FC-Arbitrated Loop, so I will limit my comments to FC-AL. At the time of writing this FAQ, SCSI is beginning to ship devices that are capable of 160 Mbytes/sec data transfer rate while fibre channel (FC) is stalled at a maximum of 100 Mbytes/sec and the only peripherals with true FC interface are disk drives — and only one manufacturer makes them. Mark up the data throughput advantage to SCSI. FC proponents say that connectivity is more important than data throughput and that FC can have up to 126 nodes. If that were true why would every increase in SCSI data throughput be immediately adopted? Data throughput rules in nearly every serious application we have encountered. Anyway, on a practical basis, FC is limited to only a couple dozen nodes which is very similar to what SCSI can ha
