FICON

The abbreviation FICON in the networking stands for Fiber connection or Fiber connectivity, both of which refer to the same thing. This technology was developed by the IBM to connect the mainframe and the central main devices to the storage device, where all the data is stored. FICON was developed by the IBM overcome the limitation that the people had to face when using the ESCON or Enterprise Systems Connection. These limitation was that the ESCON could not be used to make connection to the storage devices that were present at the larger distances as the efficiency of the ESCON decreased with the increase in the distance.

However FICON could be used to connect to the storage devices at larger distances and the data transfer speed offered by FICON was much higher than the speed offered by ESCON over the same distance. FICON, just like the ESCON is the I/O technology, that is, it can be used to enter the data in the storage area and retrieve it was well.

Another reason which contributed to the production of the FICON was that ESCON was just half duplex, thus the data could not be read and written over the same link at the same time, while on the other hand FICON supports full duplex data transfers meaning thereby that the data can be read and written at the same time over a same link.

The reason that FICON is so much better than the ESCON is that, it makes use of the mapping layer which is based on the technology of the Fiber Channel. Along with the features mentioned above FICON also have the Fiber channel multiplexing capabilities, which allows for the transaction of smaller data and the larger data at once without any problem. The maximum length at which the FICON can operate is 20 KM.