Data Center Bridging - Terminology

Terminology

Different terms have been used to market products based on data center bridging standards:

• Data Center Ethernet (DCE) was a term trademarked by Brocade Communications Systems in 2007 but abandoned by request in 2008. DCE referred to Ethernet enhancements for the Data Center Bridging standards, and also including a Layer 2 Multipathing implementation based on the IETF's Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) standard.

• Convergence Enhanced Ethernet or Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) was defined from 2008 through January 2009 by group of including Broadcom, Brocade, Cisco Systems, Emulex, HP, IBM, Juniper Networks, QLogic. The ad-hoc group formed to create proposals for enhancements that enable networking protocol convergence over Ethernet, specially Fibre Channel. Proposed specifications to IEEE 802.1 working groups initially included:
  • The Priority-based Flow Control (PFC) Version 0 Specification was submitted for use in the IEEE 802.1Qbb project, under the DCB task group of the IEEE 802.1 working group.
  • The Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS) Version 0 Specification was submitted for use in the IEEE 802.1Qaz project, under the DCB task group of the IEEE 802.1 working group.
  • The Data Center Bridging eXchange (DCBX) Version 0 Specification was also submitted for use in the IEEE 802.1Qaz project.