Monday, March 7, 2016

10G Connectivity – Comparing XFP With SFP+

Defined in 2002, XFP (10 Gigabit Small Form Factor Pluggable) is a hot-swappable and protocol-independent transceiver for 10G high-speed computer network and telecommunication links. Except for XFP, there are SFP and SFP+ transceivers available for 10G connectivity. These devices plug into a special port on a switch or other network device to convert to a copper or fiber interface. So what is the difference between them? The following passage will provide a satisfying solution to you.
SFP&SFP+&XFP
What Is XFP?
XFP is 10 Gigabit transceiver operating at wavelengths of 850nm, 1310nm or 1550nm. This module combine transmitter and receiver functions in one compact, flexible, and cost-effective package. The physical dimensions of the XFP transceiver are slightly larger than the original small form-factor pluggable transceiver (SFP). XFP transceiver modules are available with a variety of transmitter and receiver types including the SR, LR, ER and ZR. The maximum working distance of XFP SR is 300 meters. 10GBASE-LR XFP transceivers have a wavelength of 1310nm and a transmission distance up to 10 km. For example, XFP-10G-L-OC192-SR1 covers a distance of 10km with LC connectors. XFP-10GLR-OC192SR is Cisco XFP 10GBASE-LR/-LW operating at wavelength of 1310nm over singlemode fiber with a links length of 10km. Both 10GBASE-ER XFP and 10GBASE-ZR XFP modules have a wavelength of 1550nm, and the maximum transmission distance of 40km and 80km, respectively.
What Is SFP/SFP+?
SFP is most often used for Fast Ethernet of Gigabit Ethernet applications and can support speed up to 4.25Gbps. It interfaces a network device motherboard (for a switch, router, media converter or similar device) to a fiber optic or copper networking cable. It is specified by the SFP transceiver multi-source agreement. The standard SFP transceiver, SFP+ supports speeds of 10Gbps or higher over fiber. The SFP+ product family includes cages, connectors, and copper cable assemblies. It is also similar to the performance requirements of SFF-8431 and also supports 8G Fiber Channel and 10G Ethernet applications. Take 46C3447 as an example, it is 10GBASE-SR SFP+ that can support a distance of 300m over OM3 cable.
What’s the Difference Between XFP and SFP+?
First of all, both of them are 10G transceiver modules and can contact with other types of 10G modules. The primary difference between SFP+ and the slightly older XFP standard is that the SFP+ moves the chip for clock and data recovery into a line card on the host device. This makes SFP+ smaller than XFP, enabling greater port density. Because of the smaller volume, SFP+ transfer signal modulation function, serial/deserializer, the MAC, clock and data recovery (CDR) and electronic dispersion compensation (EDC) function from the module to the Lord on the card. In addition, SFP+ compared to XFP, is a more compact factor package. The cost of SFP+ is also less than that to the XFP, X2 and XENPAK. It can connect with the same type of XFP, X2 and XENPAK as well. Therefore, SFP+ is more popular than XFP for 10G network.
Summary
10G optical transceivers are designed for 10G or 10Gbit/s data transmission applications including 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 10Gbit/s Fibre Channel, Synchronous optical networking. After years of development, there has been various different form factors and optics types introduced including XENPAK, X2, XFP and SFP+. But up to now, SFP+ is the most commonly used 10G transceivers available on the market. Fiberstore provides a large selection of 10G transceivers with minimum price and high quality. If you have any requirement of our products, please contact us directly.

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