This paper describes the move to 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel, the benefits and the 
major applications that will benefit from this newest interconnect technology. 
 
 
Introduction  
Since the 2001 introduction of 2 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) Fibre Channel 
(FC) technology, engineers have been working on the next generation of 
Fibre Channel interconnection – 4 Gb/s.  The new technology is now 
available, thoroughly tested and offered to enterprise customers.  
 
4 Gb/s Fibre Channel systems are ideally suited for applications that need 
to quickly transfer large amounts of data – such as remote replication 
across a SAN, database in memory; streaming video on demand; medical 
imaging; data mining and data warehousing; and large databases 
supporting online transaction processing (OLTP). Additionally, large 
increases in online data, such as driven by radio frequency identification 
(RFID) applications, will leverage the benefits of 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel 
technology.   
 
 
4 Gb/s Fibre Channel 
Storage System 
The IBM® 
TotalStorage® 
DS4800 controller, 
features sixth 
generation system 
technology and offers 
the same extensive 
capabilities and 
functionality as other 
IBM DS4000 series 
Fibre Channel 
systems.  These 
capabilities include 
broad support for 
operating systems and 
host types; advanced 
replication services 
such as Snapshot, 
remote volume 
mirroring and volume 
copying.