Storage love-in proves IP's a runner

A group of storage companies has proved that storage over IP networks can work without a hitch.

Eight storage companies, including giants such as Dell, Hitachi and IBM have teamed up to transmit data across the US continent using internet protocol (IP), the protocol used to carry information on the net.

The test, which started in July and completed at the end of August, was named the Promontory Project. It managed to prove that large chunks of data could be transferred at 5 gigabits per second on a 10Gbps link.

The storage industry has had doubts over the performance of storage over IP because storage networks primarily use the Fibre Channel protocol, which is fast and reliable but expensive and difficult to build.

The cost of fibre have led several companies to trying to replace Fibre Channel with IP to cut down the cost of storage and improve the connectivity.

The other companies involved in the test were Data Systems, Nishan, Intel, Qlogic and Qwest.