What is Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) characterized as?

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is characterized as an encapsulation protocol that lacks reliable data transport. This is because FCoE is designed to encapsulate Fibre Channel frames over Ethernet networks, enabling the convergence of storage and data networking architectures. While FCoE allows for the use of Ethernet infrastructure to carry Fibre Channel data, it does not provide inherent reliability features of its own since it relies on the Ethernet Layer 2 frame transport.

The significant aspect of FCoE is its ability to reduce latency and complexity by allowing storage traffic to traverse existing Ethernet networks, but it still depends on the underlying Ethernet protocol to manage data transport reliability. Thus, looking at the nature of FCoE, it's clear that while it facilitates storage networking over Ethernet, it does not add reliability protocols itself, which is foundational to its characterization as an encapsulation protocol.