Enabling FIP Keep Alive on Brocade 8000

I received a question from a colleague in Singapore yesterday asking about the D bit in FIP FKA_ADV_Period Descriptor.  Apparently, a customer was wondering if it could be changed from “one” to "zero" on a Brocade 8000 switch.

A portion of the customer's email is shown below:

The Discovery Advertisement frame received from the switch has the “D” bit set to 1. This seems to be disabling the FIP Keep Alive frames.  We would like to have these Keep Alive frames. What can we do to modify the current behavior?

FYI, according to the standard

http://www.t11.org/ftp/t11/pub/fc/bb-5/09-056v5.pdf Table 41 FIP FKA_ADV_Period descriptor format

7.8.6.3.13 FIP FKA_ADV_Period descriptor

D: the value of the D bit shall be administratively configurable on FCFs. The D bit shall be set to zero unless administratively set to one. VE_Port capable FCF-MACs shall ignore the value of the D bit provided in received Discovery Advertisements. ENode MACs shall process the value of the D bit provided in received Discovery Advertisements.

When the D bit is set to zero, the receiving ENode MAC shall verify periodic reception of Discovery Advertisements and shall transmit periodic ENode FIP Keep Alive and VN_Port FIP Keep Alive frames as specified in 7.8.5.2. The VF_Port capable FCF-MAC shall verify periodic reception of ENode FIP Keep Alive and VN_Port FIP Keep Alive frames as specified in 7.8.5.2.

My response was:

Hi, you can display the FIP configuration settings by using the “fcoe --fipcfgshow” command.

----Example----

Elara_IOP05472_AG:admin> fcoe --fipcfgshow

FIP Unsolicited Advertisement Interval = 8

FIP Keep Alive Timeout Disabled.

========================================

VLAN            fcmap

========================================

1002            0x0efc00 [Default fcmap]

========================================

Elara_IOP05472_AG:admin>

 --------

You can configure the FIP FKA-adv-period (shown above as FIP Keep Alive Timeout Disabled.) using the “fcoe --fipcfg -advinterval <value>" command.

----Example---- 

Elara_IOP05472_AG:admin> fcoe --fipcfg -advintvl 8

FIP Unsolicited Advertisement Interval is set to = 8

Elara_IOP05472_AG:admin> fcoe --fipcfgshow

FIP Unsolicited Advertisement Interval = 8

FIP Keep Alive Timeout Enabled. FKA_ADV_PERIOD = 8

========================================

VLAN            fcmap

========================================

1002            0x0efc00 [Default fcmap]

========================================

Elara_IOP05472_AG:admin>

-------- 

Thanks for reading!