Host Adapter

In computer hardware, a host controller, host adapter, or host bus adapter (HBA) connects a host system (the computer) to other network and storage devices. The terms are primarily used to refer to devices for connecting SCSI, Fibre Channel and eSATA devices, but devices for connecting to IDE, Ethernet, FireWire, USB and other systems may also be called host adapters. Recently, the advent of iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet has brought about Ethernet HBAs, which are different from Ethernet NICs in that they include TCP Offload Engines. There are also converged HBAs that support both Ethernet and Fibre Channel called Converged Network Adapters (CNAs).