High Speed Ethernet Cabling

There is a variety of types of cables and transceiver modules available for making Ethernet connections at speeds of 1Gigabit per second and above. This article will introduce the widely used optical transceivers and cables for 1-Gigabit, 10-Gigabit and 40-Gigabit connections.

1-Gigabit Connections

Transceivers Optical fiber connections are constructed with a combination of a transceiver (sometimes called a GBIC – for GigaBit Interface Converter). The transceiver accepts digital signals from the Ethernet device (switch or adapter card) and converts them to optical signals for transmission over the fiber. Although a number of different form factors for this GBIC have been defined by standards bodies, the most common is the SFP (Small Form Factor Pluggable Transceiver). The term GBIC initially was used for a specific form factor, but with the widespread adoption of the smaller SFP standard form factor, the term GBIC has fallen into the vernacular as a general term for an optical transceiver.
Cables The most commonly used cable for 1Gbps Ethernet is the Category 5 (Cat5) cable with an RJ45 connector on either end. This cable can handle connections of up to about 100 M in length. For longer connections an optical fiber cable can be used.

10-Gigabit Connections

For 10-Gigabit Ethernet cabling the fiber options are very similar. The transceivers are somewhat different, as is some nomenclature. New possibilities have evolved for copper connections.

Transceivers Standards bodies initially offered several options for the 10-Gigabit transceiver. The one that ultimately evolved as most popular in commercial data center usage was the XFP transceiver. XFP stands for 10–Gigabit Form Factor Pluggable. In recent years an extension of the SFP transceiver was standardized for use with 10 Gigabit Ethernet and named SFP+. SFP+ has the same mechanical characteristics as the the SFP transceiver – it just is capable of supporting the higher speed (some, but not all, SFP+ transceivers can actually operate at either 1Gbps or 10Gbps). The advantage of SFP+ was that it was smaller than the XFP form factor allowing for much more dense packaging of ports on switches.
Fiber Cables 10-Gigabit Ethernet fiber connections use the same optical fiber types as 1-Gigabit Ethernet. The range is less due to the higher speed and the names are similar: Short Range: SR -for connections of up to 300 M in length Long Range: LR –for connections of up to 2,000 M (2 KM) in length. A new option is also available, though rather rarely used: Extended Range: ER – for connections of up to 10,000 M (10 KM) in length.

40-Gigabit Connections

Transceivers 40 Gigabit optical transceivers mainly include CFP transceiver and QSFP transceiver. The most common types of QSFP/QSFP+ optical transceivers are QSFP-40G-PLR4, QSFP-40G-CSR4, 40GBASE-PLRL4, QSFP-40G-LR4, and QSFP-40G-SR4. For example, Juniper JNP-QSFP-40G-LR4 compatible 40GBASE-LR4 QSFP + transceiver from Fiberstore provides 4 CWDM lanes in 1310nm and achieves a transmission distance of 10km over single mode fibers.
Cable Assemblies Cables used in 40 Gigabit Ethernet mainly include passive and active direct attach copper cables and active optical cable (AOC). The QSFP+ passive or active direct attach copper cables are designed with twinax copper cable and terminated with QSFP+ connectors. For instance, Cisco QSFP-4SFP10G-CU1M compatible QSFP+ to 4SFP+ passive copper cable is suitable for very short distances and offer a very cost-effective way to establish a 40-gigabit link between QSFP port and SFP+ port of Cisco switches within racks and across adjacent racks. The main difference between passive QSFP+ DAC and active QSFP+ DAC is that the passive one is without the active component. AOC is used for short-range multi-lane data communication and interconnect applications. It uses electrical-to-optical conversion on the cable ends to improve speed and distance performance of the cable without sacrificing compatibility with standard electrical interfaces.

As the main fiber optical manufacturer and supplier in China, Fiberstore offers a full range of optical transceivers, such as SFP+ transceiver, X2 transceiver, XENPAK transceiver, XFP transceiver, SFP transceiver, GBIC transceiver, CWDM/DWDM transceiver, 40G QSFP+ & CFP, 3G-SDI video SFP, WDM Bi-Directional transceiver and PON transceiver. All our fiber transceivers are 100% compatible with major brands like Cisco, HP, Juniper, Nortel, Force10, D-link, 3Com.