Broadcast and multicast in a Fibre Channel fabric uses the concept of a distribution tree to reach all switches in the fabric. Fibre Channel defines 256 multicast groups and one broadcast address for each. Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel networks form a. This chapter contains the following sections: Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) is the standard path selection protocol used by Fibre Channel fabrics. It supports data backup and replication. To maximize the redundancy of the SAN, the host operating system must use multipathing I/O (MPIO) software. Redundant paths in a network are always a curse.