Tag Archives: Fibre vs. fiber

“Fibre” vs. “fiber” Explained

Know the difference between “Fibre” vs. “fiber” in connectivity hardware.

References to Fibre Channel can be confusing partly due to the use of the words “fibre” and “fiber” interchangeably.

Both spellings mean essentially the same thing, but have evolved with the technology to be used for more specific aspects of the architecture or hardware.

“Fibre” is used in non-US international English, and the spelling “fiber” is primarily used in US English. The official spelling of the FC technology is “Fibre Channel”. The word “fiber” is generally used more often when referring to the actual optical glass fiber cables used to facilitate high speed communication over long distances.

Now you know the common usage of the terms fibre vs fiber. Though making it all work together is a whole different matter which will be covered on this site soon.

Solaris Fibre Channel Commands

Here’s a few Solaris commands that are useful for determining what type of Fibre Channel adapters you have installed in your system.

The ifconfig command won’t show fibre interfaces unless they are configured for IP over FC.

There is a Solaris 10 command called ‘fcinfo’ that will give you more information on your fibre devices.

Command usage for fcinfo (must be root to get results from this command, it won’t return an error, just the message; “No Adapters Found.”, when the command is not run as root. This can be confusing and frustrating if you know that FC adapters are installed on your system. Trust me. I’ve been there in my early days of plodding through fibre channel connectivity.

Fcinfo as a standard user:

Sunbox%  fcinfo hba-port

No Adapters Found.

As root:

sunbox#  fcinfo hba-port

HBA Port WWN: 2100001b………

“Fibre” vs. “fiber”

References to Fibre Channel can be confusing partly due to the use of the words “fibre” and “fiber” interchangeably.

Both spellings mean essentially the same thing, but have evolved with the technology to be used for more specific aspects of the architecture or hardware.

“Fibre” is used in non-US international English, and the spelling “fiber” is primarily used in US English. The official spelling of the FC technology is “Fibre Channel” The word “fiber” is generally used more often when referring to the actual optical glass fiber cables used to facilitate high speed communication over long distances.

More Solaris fibre channel commands coming soon!