Disclosed are methods and apparatus for network wide discovery of service
ports of a gateway device in a storage area network (SAN) that are
available for use by hosts on a first particular network segment, for
example, for accessing storage devices in the SAN. The hosts of the first
Internet Protocol (IP) network segment implement an IP and not a fiber
channel protocol, while devices in the SAN (and possibly other hosts on
other network segments) implement a fiber channel protocol. The
particular network segment may also be isolated from other network
segments that are each in communication with a different gateway device
or set of service ports than the first network segment. In general,
available ports are discovered with respect to a particular network
segment, such as the first network segment. That is, only the service
ports that are capable of communication with the first network segment
are discovered to be available for the hosts of such first network
segment. Other service ports are not capable of communication with the
first network segment. For example, these service ports are configured to
communicate with another network segment that is isolated from the first
network segment. These other service ports are not discovered to be
available to hosts on the first network segment.