This paper presents a detailed overview of the current and future networking options within the storage arena. Particular emphasis is placed on exploring strategic storage solutions, which are based on metropolitan area network (MAN) deployments, with respect to market influences, transmission evolution, and mediation. Evolution of storage networking is moving towards a connecting role between multiple SAN islands and enterprise networks, across geographically dispersed networks. This connection-based role can be typically over WANs or MANs and can be achieved in a number of ways ― dark fibre point-to-point, ATM/SDH circuits and WDM. This paper focuses on what are believed to be the key technologies and evolutionary trends in this area, and discusses storage-based issues relating to optical networking, WDM, SDH, A TM, as well as connectivity over IP.
展开▼
