Short for Fiber Connection, or Fiber Connectivity, IBM’s fiber opticchannel technology that extends the capabilities of its previous fiber optic channel standard, ESCON. Unlike ESCON, FICON supports full duplex data transfers and enables greater throughput rates over longer distances. FICON uses a mapping layer that is based on technology developed for Fibre Channel and multiplexing technology, which allows small data transfers to be transmitted at the same time as larger ones. IBM first introduced the technology in 1998 on its G5 servers.
