In this technological world of lightning fast changes every second, it’s not a wise choice to not stay on the cutting edge for some companies and organizations whose data centers are the strategic assets they own. They have to keep on up-to data information and make the decisions in real time, leading to the great attention and investment on their data center infrastructure, especially on optical transceivers which are closely related to the promotion of big data transmission in data centers. For some companies, the optical transceivers from the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) are a little expensive, and may cause the budget burden on them. As such, third-party optical transceivers have been brought to the market as a smart and creative solution to help save costs.

Then, question occurs. What does third-party mean? Why third-party optical transceivers are popular? If third-party optical transceivers are selected, how to test and verify them? Don’t worry. Follow this article and get the answers.

Firstly, third-suppliers exist in all sorts of industries, and they typically refer to those companies that have a high degree of specialization in some field. Third-party is a common term used in telecommunication market. Here, it’s necessary to tell OEM from third-party. In telecommunication market, OEMs aren’t really manufacturing anything, but rather, have things built for them under contract, and then "integrate” this solution under their brand name. Then there are OEMs that continue to supply components to other OEMs, while establishing a brand of their own. They can also be considered third-party for other OEMs, if they’ve not explicitly been brought into the fold as a vendor to that OEM.

In most cases, people prefer third-party optical transceivers to OEMs’. There is absolutely no difference between an officially-branded transceiver and a third-party transceiver regarding quality and performance, except cost. Fiberstore, as an outstanding third-party supplier of fiber optical products, offers various kinds of optical transceivers for different Gigabit standard applications, say SFP modules shown below (eg. MGBSX1 and MGBLX1). These two 1000BASE-SX SFPs listed in Fiberstore are fully compatible with Cisco. So long as optical transceivers meet the international standards, there is no question of compatibility between third-party optical transceivers and OEMs’. So, how to test and verify third-party optical transceivers?

It seems a little difficult to test and verify third-party transceiver modules, since there are many components from different suppliers in the entire network. To ensure they meet the system level requirements, it’s advised to consider the following points.

• Test Acceptable Bit-Error Ratio

It’s always required to operate within an acceptable bit-error ratio (BER) in a digital communication system. This is true whether you are testing an interface bus in a laptop computer or a telecommunications link. Generally speaking, when you’re testing component in a digital communication system, it should be no more than one error in 1012 bits. If the desired BER is not reached, the problem must be judged whether in the transmitter, or in receiver, or both.

• Ensure Interoperability With a Worst-Case Transmitter

Network specifications should determine if the worst-case transmitter will interoperate with a receiver. Transmitters should also have a signal sufficient enough to support the worst-case transceiver.

• Determine the Minimal Power Level & Jitter Level

A receiver needs to achieve a minimum power level, so as to achieve the BER target. The achieved level will dictate the minimum allowed output power. Likewise, if the receiver can only achieve a certain level of jitter, this will be used to define the maximum amount of jitter that can be received from the transmitter without malfunctioning. Transmitter parameters may specify the wavelength and the output waveform shape.

• Verify Compliance With Multiple Samples

Several waveform samples are required to remain compliant. Sometimes, a larger population of waveform samples will provide an accurate assessment of transmitter performance. The oscilloscope will collect more data, but as more samples are increased the likelihood of mask violations increase. Since the results are either pass or fail, it is important to acquire as many samples as possible to get an accurate assessment, which requires aligning the mask to the waveform.

• Understand Instrumentation Effects

It’s known that any transceiver test can be skewed according to the oscilloscope’s frequency response. You can achieve consistent results with a reference receiver. Most tests will use a fourth-order Bessel filter response, and the 3-dB bandwidth is at 75 percent of the data rate.

After discussion, you may have gained a better understanding of approaches to test and verify third-party optical transceivers. Listed above are just a few methods to test and verify third-party optical transceivers. If you follow those steps, then you can go on third-party optical transceiver testing and verification easily. Fiberstore third-party optical transceivers are tested and assured with high quality, 100% compatible with major brands. Besides Cisco transceivers talked above, HP, Juniper, Nortel transceivers can also be found in Fiberstore with low prices, like J4858C, a HP Compatible 1000BASE-SX SFP transceiver just costs US$ 6.00. Want to know more information about third-party optical transceivers, please visit Fiberstore.

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In order to better accommodate the increasing demands that data center growth puts on the network, various bandwidth-delivering fiber optical products have been designed and developed by telecommunication equipment manufacturers. Among these fiber optical equipment, transceiver modules, one of the most critical components for establishing fiber links, have attracted more and more attention for their unique and sophisticated designs. There are a wide range of pluggable transceivers modules in the market, supporting several form factors, like SFP, SFP+, QSFP+, with performance data rate from 1Gbps to, to 10Gbps, to 40Gbps, etc. This text focuses on 40G QSFP+ transceiver modules and their cabling options, guiding you to select the right 40G QSFP+ transceiver and cable type for your networking project.

The Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable (QSFP) is a compact, hot-pluggable transceiver used for data communications applications in 40Gigabit per second links. QSFP connectors provide four channels of data in one pluggable interface. Each channel is capable of transferring data at 10Gb/s and supports a total of 40Gb/s as specified for QSFP+. Listed below are two commonly-used QSFP+ types: 40GBASE-SR4, 40GBASE-SR-BiDi and 40GBASE-ER4.

• 40GBASE-SR4

40GBASE-SR4 is specified to work through muldi-mode fiber (MMF), able to achieve link lengths of 100m and 150m respectively, on laser-optimized OM3 and OM4. It establishes high-bandwidth 40G optical links over 12-fiber parallel fiber terminated with MPO/MTP multi-fiber female connectors. Besides, this 40GBASE-SR4 standard can also be used in a 4x10G mode for interoperability with 10GBASE-SR interfaces, with distances up to 100m and 150m on OM3 and OM4, respectively. Fibertore listed 40GBASE-SR4 products include Intel E40GQSFPSR, Cisco QSFP-40G-SR4, Mellanox MC2210411-SR4, and so on. All are tested in compatibility with these major brands.

• 40GBASE-SR-BiDi

QSFP 40-Gbps bidirectional (BiDi) transceiver is a pluggable optical transceiver with a duplex LC connector interface for short-reach data communication and interconnect applications using MMF. Each QSFP 40-Gbps BiDi transceiver consists of two 20-Gbps transmit and receive channels in the 832-918nm wavelength range, enabling an aggregated 40-Gbps link over a two-strand MMF connection. By supporting link lengths of 100m and 150m on laser-optimized OM3 and OM4 respectively, QSFP 40-Gbps BiDi transceiver offers customers a compelling solution that enables reuse of their existing 10 Gigabit duplex MMF infrastructure for migration to 40GbE connectivity.

• 40GBASE-ER4

40GBASE-ER4 is standardized to operate over SMF, permitting link lengths up to 40km with duplex LC connectors. The 40GE or OTU3 signal is carried over four wavelengths in the 1310nm range. Multiplexing and demultiplexing of the four wavelengths are managed within the device. QSFP-40G-ER4, a Cisco 40GBASE-ER4 product, is just capable of accomplishing 40km link length over G.652 SMF.

40G QSFP+ cabling options generally include the following four flavors: MPO/MTP fiber patch cable, QSFP to QSFP copper direct attach cables (DACs), QSFP to QSFP active optical cables (AOCs), QSFP to four SFP+ breakout cables. The following passages will focus on the latter three options.

• QSFP to QSFP Copper DACs/AOCs

Both QSFP to QSFP copper DACs and QSFP to QSFP AOCs are designed for very short distances, serving a flexible solution to connect within racks and across adjacent racks. Compared with copper DACs, AOCs are much thinner and lighter, meaning the easier cabling. Additionally, AOCs enable efficient system airflow and have no EMI issues, which is critical in high-density racks. QSFP to QSFP copper DACs are available in length of 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10m, while QSFP to QSFP AOCs allow the maximum link length of 15m.

• QSFP to Four SFP+ Breakout Cables

QSFP to four SFP+ breakout cables are available in two kinds: QSFP to four SFP+ copper breakout cables, and QSFP to four SFP+ active optical breakout cables. In a QSFP to four SFP+ breakout cabling assembly, a 40G QSFP port of a switch is connected to the cable on one end and four 10G SFP+ ports of a switch on the other end, free from upgrading the entire data center or storage array. Each QSFP-SFP+ splitter cable features a single QSFP connector (SFF-8436) rated for 40-Gb/s on one end and (4) SFP+ connectors (SFF-8431), each rated for 10-Gb/s, on the other.

QSFP to Four SFP+ breakout cables are currently available in 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10m, functioning as a great cost-effective interconnect solution to IT professionals by providing much needed space for data centers and low costs.

In a word, 40G QSFP+ transceivers and cables offer multiple connectivity options with media type (DAC, AOC, SMF, and MMF) in data centers. For some data center networks, the main connectivity problems are related to low-quality and incompatible modules. Fiberstore just helps you to clear off these problems. Here in Fiberstore, its 40G QSFP+ modules have been vigorously tested, and are ensured with high quality to work in compatibility with major brands. You can buy them with no concerns about the quality or performance.

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Due to the huge amount of storage needed for great bandwidth services, like high-quality video streaming and rapid file download, the demands for even higher speeds are increasing rapidly in telecommunication and datacoms networks. To accommodate such fast-growing bandwidth demands, the IEEE ratified standards to support 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) in 2010, known as 802.3ba.

The IEEE standard 802.3ba released several 40-Gbps based solutions, including 40GBASE-LR4 optic transceivers over single-mode fiber (SMF), 40GBASE-SR4 optics solution for multi-mode fiber (MMF). The former is suitable for significantly long distances, while the latter is appropriates for short distances. Actually, there is another component available to replace 40GBASE-SR4 optics when the required distances are short in network interconnections, that is 40GBASE QSFP+ AOC (active optic cable). This text mainly differs these two short-reach solutions for 40GbE transmission: 40GBASE-SR4 optics and 40GBASE QSFP+ AOC.

40GBASE-SR4 optics uses a 12-fiber MPO connector interface where all the 12 fibers are aligned in a single row. Four fibers on one side are used to transmit, while another four on the other side are utilized to receive, leaving the middle four fibers unused. In total, eight of the twelve fiber are used.

As a kind of DAC (direct attach cable), AOC can be applied in 10G, 40G and even 120G. When used in 40G transmission, two versions of AOC cabling assembly are available. The first one is QSFP to QSFP, with QSFP+ connector on one end and another QSFP+ connector on the other end. The second is QSFP to four SFP+, with one end connected with a QSFP+ connector and the other end with several SFP+ connectors. Like QSFP-4X10G-AOC10M, this 40G cabling product is the second cabling assembly. Although the "transceivers” on both ends of AOCs are not real optics and their components are without optical lasers, they have a similar function of real optic transceiver, and also can transmission signals through fiber optic cables.

Both 40GBASE-SR4 optics and 40GBASE QSFP+ AOC are good solutions for interconnection. But everything has two sides just like a coin. Each solution has its pros and cons. Figure out the differences and choose the better component for your applications.

• Transmission Distance

The first point is the transmission distance. As what has been mentioned above, 40GBASE-SR4 optics and 40GBASE QSFP+ AOC are designed to support short distance transmission. When the required distance is less than 100m, these two solutions have similar performance. But when link length is longer than 100m, then 40GBASE-SR4 optics is the better choice. 40GBASE-SR4 transceiver (eg. MC2210411-SR4) is able to realize 150m reach over OM4 MMF. Currently, most 40G AOC provided by the telecommunication equipment manufacturers are less than 100m.

• Reliability

Reliability comes as the second factor to be considered. For interconnection use, both of the two components should be inserted into a switch or a server. And the repeating plug of them is necessary for daily use and maintenance, which might affect the performances of the component. As such, reliability is of great importance during these daily actions. 40G AOC connectors are factory pre-terminated, while QSFP+ SR4 transceivers are connected by additional MPO connectors and fiber optic cables. In contrast, AOC is less affected by the repeating plug during daily use. AOC has better reliability than that of transceivers.

• Installation and Maintenance

It’s clear that 40G AOC is easier for installation, since 40G AOC connectors are factory pre-terminated. For working use, customers just need to plug the two connectors in the switches. In comparison, as for QSFP+ SR4 transceivers, additional patch cords with MPO connectors are needed to establish the link. When talking about maintenance, in case there was a fault in the interconnection, for AOC, you can just replace it with another AOC. However, for interconnection using QSFP+ SR4 transceivers, you have to locate the fault firstly by testing the patch cords and optics, and then find the fault, which means a time-consuming task.

• Cost

In most cases, cost means a lot for users. Here cost includes two aspects: material cost and the possible maintenance cost in daily use. As for the material cost, the price for 40G AOC is generally cheaper than 40GBASE-SR4 optics, as the "transceivers” on both ends of AOCs are not real optics. In a word, 40G AOC has advantages over 40GBASE-SR4 optics in both material cost and maintenance cost.

Judging from transmission distance, 40GBASE-SR4 optics has better performance. According to the reliability, installation, maintenance and cost, 40G AOC is a better choice, cheaper and reliable. For your applications, Fiberstore supplies a sea of 40GBASE-SR4 transceivers (eg. MC2210411-SR4) and 40G QSFP+ AOC (eg. QSFP-4X10G-AOC10M). You can buy them at Fiberstore with lower prices and enjoy high performance. Please visit Fiberstore if you want such a product.

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Fiber optic cable, as one of the fast-growing transmission mediums, has gained more and more popularity among users. Admittedly, compared with traditional copper wires, fiber optic cables reduce issue potentialities that are common with traditional copper wires, such as loss and interference. Made of sophisticated glass or plastic, fiber optic cables can send signals over longer distances at higher bandwidths while ensuring the data reliability and transmission speed. Along with their wide use, people know more about fiber optic cables, as many papers and articles have been contributed to the publication of them. Here, I’d like to take it one step further on bringing fiber optic cables even closer to people. In this text, differences have been detailed among several fiber optic cable types.

Indoor fiber optic cables are required to be installed between or in buildings. For this reason, indoor fiber optic cables are designed to endure less temperature and mechanical stress, compared with outdoor ones. However, indoor cables have to be flame-retardant, emitting a low level of smoke in case of burning. For vertical installation, indoor cables permit a small bend radius to make them bendable, so as to allow easy handling. Most indoor cables are in tight buffer design.

Outdoor fiber optic cables, are needed for outdoor use. They can be installed under seas, or be placed in rivers. They are not necessarily fire-retardant. Instead, they are designed to be tolerable with harsh environments, like extreme high or low temperature, heavy rain, mechanical heat, and so on. Outdoor cables are usually in loose-tube design.

Single-mode fiber (SMF), has only one pathway for signal transmission with a 8–10micron core, making the signal focused toward the center of the core instead of simply bouncing it off the edge of the core as multi-mode fiber (MMF) does. Consequently, SMF, is often used in long-haul network connections that demand high-bandwidth data transmission. In Gigabit applications, SMF is a "repeat customer”. Take Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) application for example, when SMF is deployed in combination with 1000BASE-ZX SFP transceiver (eg. GLC-ZX-SM), 70km distance reach is possible.

In contrary, MMF allows multiple pathways and several wavelengths of light to be transmitted with its larger core, 50micron and 62.5micron, thus having higher "light-gathering” capacity. Its larger core allows it to support more than one propagation mode, limited by modal dispersion, suitable for short-reach network projects. In GbE applications, the maximum possible distance reach is 550m when MMF is used with 1000BASE-SX SFP (eg. 1783-SFP1GSX), a Allen-Bradley transceiver module.

Single-mode and multi-mode patch cables are available in simplex and duplex versions (figure shown below).

Simplex, also known as single strand, patch cable has one fiber, while duplex cable has two fibers joined with a thin web. Simplex and duplex zipcord cables are tight-buffered and jacketed, with Kevlar strength members. Since simplex fiber optic cable consists of only one fiber link, it’s typically deployed for applications that only require one-way data transfer. For those applications, like fiber switches and servers, it’s advised to choose duplex fiber optic cable for simultaneous and bidirectional data transfer.

Distribution-style cables have several tight-buffered fibers bundled under the same jacket with Kevlar or fiberglass rod reinforcement. These cables are small in size and are used for short, dry conduit runs, in either riser or plenum applications. The fibers can be directly terminated, but because the fibers are not individually reinforced, these cables need to be broken out with a "breakout box” or terminated inside a patch panel or junction box.

Breakout-style cables are made of several simplex cables bundled together, making a strong design that is larger than distribution cables. Breakout cables are suitable for conduit runs and riser and plenum applications.

All these kinds of fiber optic cables play an important role in cabling installations or upgrades for optical networks. Or in other words, fiber optic links give full play to these fiber optic cables regarding data transmission rate, distance, electromagnetic interference and radio-frequency interference (EMI/RFI) immunity, and more. Fiberstore supplies various kinds of fiber optic cables, indoor/outdoor, single-mode/multi-mode, simplex/duplex, distribution/breakout all included. For more information about fiber optic cables, you can visit Fiberstore.

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Nowadays, data center and telecommunications witness a big increase in bandwidth demand, which requires the deployment of new fiber links that can provide greater bandwidth and improved power efficiency. During the years, fiber optical technology has experienced constant development and improvement to be maturer and maturer, and now comes as the ideal solution for higher-speed and higher-performance data transmission, during which data is received by fiber optic transceivers through fiber cables.

With the furious competition in telecommunication market, a wide selection of fiber optic transceivers has been designed and provided for networking use. It’s known that when selecting fiber optic transceivers, several factor need to be considered: form-factor, package, fiber type, etc. Here, in this text, detailed information goes to the third one—fiber type, that is single-mode transceiver and multi-mode transceiver. What are the differences between them? Have any idea? Follow this article and get answers.

Single-mode transceiver, as its name shows, works on single -mode fiber (SMF), while multi-mode transceiver operates over multi-mode fiber (MMF).

Compared with MMF, SMF has much tighter tolerances for optics used. The SMF core is smaller and the laser wavelength is narrower., meaning that SMF has the capability for higher bandwidth and much longer distances in transmission. Single-mode transceivers work mainly in 1310nm and 1550nm wavelengths, mostly used in long distance transmission environment, with reaching distances ranging from 2km, to 10km, to 40km, to 60km, to 80km and or even to 120km. 1000BASE-LX and 10GBASE-LR (eg. JD094B) are commonly used single-mode transceiver types.

Generally speaking, single-mode transceivers use the following color coding:

• Violet color coded bale clasp designates the 1490nm transceiver;

• Blue color coded bale clasp designates the 1510nm transceiver;

• Yellow color coded bale clasp designates the 1550nm transceiver;

The color of the compatible fiber optic patch cord or pigtail is yellow.

With a much bigger core, MMF usually uses a longer wavelength of light. Because of this, the optics used in MMF have a higher capability to gather light from the laser. In practical terms, this means that the optics are cheaper. The common multi-mode transceivers operate in 850nm wavelength and are only used for short distance transmission, reaching 100m and 500m. Among these multi-mode transceiver types, including 1000BASE-SX, 10GBASE-SR and 10GBASE-LRM, 1000BASE-SX SFP transceivers are a commonplace in Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) applications. Take SFP-GE-S for example, this Cisco compatible 1000BASE-SX SFP listed in Fiberstore is able to achieve 550m over OM2 MMF using 850nm wavelength laser.

Only black color coded bale clasp is used in multi-mode transceivers. The color of the compatible fiber optic patch cord or pigtail is orange.

When we use single-mode and multi-mode transceivers, we should keep the following points in mind.

• Make sure that the transceivers in both ends of the fiber patch cord are of the same wavelength. A simple way to do it is to ensure that the color of the modules is consistent.

• No bends or winding of fiber optic cables, so as to avoid the increase of the attenuation in data transmission.

• Generally speaking, short-wave transceiver modules use with multi-mode fibers (ie. orange fiber patch cord), while long-wave SFP modules use with single-mode fiber (ie. yellow fiber patch cord). As such, the accurate data transmission is assured.

• If transceiver module isn’t in use, be sure to cover the empty port with a dust plug to protect the optical bore.

When you select transceiver module for your networking project, it’s imperative to confirm the transmission distance, and fiber type, then you can choose the right transceiver module more efficiently. Of course, cost in most cases, constitutes a budget pressure to users. To save money, compatible modules provided at lower prices but with the same quality and reliability are the ideal choices. Fiberstore, as an outstanding fiber optical product supplier, offers 100% compatible fiber optic transceiver modules of many brands, like the above-mentioned HP JD094B and Cisco SFP-GE-S. For more information about fiber optic transceiver modules, you can visit Fiberstore.

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The efforts put by telecommunication equipment manufacturers have spanned the years with the aim to develop higher-bandwidth-delivering products, so as to better accommodate the users’ needs. Admittedly, the past several years have witnessed the increased adoption of 10G network links among enterprises and organizations. But no one is able to predict the fast growing rate of network bandwidth, whose primary booster is the increasing numbers of broadband subscribers coupled with the growing number of online users accessing video-on-demand sites. 10G network infrastructure can’t meet the users’ demands for higher bandwidth well. As such, the need for dense 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) infrastructure is necessary.

40GbE infrastructure allows link aggregation, simplifying the data network topology by bonding multiple lower speed lanes. However, the migration path from 10G to 40G, in no case, is free from thistles and thorns. Some difficulties may occur. But don’t worry. This text lists migration challenges and the corresponding solutions.

The following paragraphs detail four challenges met by users while moving from 10GbE to 40GbE network infrastructure.

• Increase in Cost

The first challenge comes to the cost. Migration to 40G isn’t a cost0saving project. The price of a 40G link is expensive than that of 4*10G links (as shown in the figure below). The 40G equipment that bridges applications and switching solutions for 40G is a main factor that causes the increase in budget. For instance, a QSFP transceiver, like QFX-QSFP-40G-SR4, a 40GBASE-SR4 QSFP+, is much more expensive than a 10GBASE-SR SFP+(eg. F5-UPG-SFP+-R), that is almost five times judging from the average market price.

• Drop in Optical Signal to Noise Ratio (OSNR)

The second one goes to the drop in OSNR. A unit of information, called a symbol, transmitted at 10Gbit/s takes 100 pico seconds (100ps), and the same symbol transmitted at 40Gbit/s takes 25ps. This means the receiver translating the light back into a symbol deals with only 25% of the light of a 10G symbol. It causes 6 dB OSNR to drop. The OSNR is a measure of the strength of the signal. So the drop of 6dB means the link length will be decreased by 75%.

• Increase in Chromatic Dispersion (CD)

When a signal travels through a fiber, CD causes the pulses constituting the signal to spread in time. If this spreading is not compensated, these pulses will overlap. It means the signal is unusable. Comparing to 10G, this effect is 16 times more obvious at 40G. This creates a serious roadblock for 40G system operating.

• Increase in Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD)

PMD is the third problem which may be the most difficult to solve. This occurs due to infinitesimal imperfections in the circularity of the core of a fiber, which may be caused by the material itself, manufacturing process, or stress in the field created by bending or twisting. PMD is more capricious than predictable, and is very dependent on the qualities of the fiber. PMD can be influenced by factors including cable age or vintage, temperature of cable, cable design and cable manufacturer, etc.

Although migration from 10G to 40G encounters some difficulties mentioned above, several modulation schemes and approaches have been developed.

• About Cost Savings

40G migration requires the use of new equipment. As mentioned above, some optical equipment like transceivers from Google searching result are quite expensive. In order to save money, you can consider the third-party suppliers, such as Fiberstore, whose fiber optical products, including fiber optic transceivers and cables, are quality assured and fully compatible with major brands. Besides, these compatible products are sold at really low prices. For example, the price of QFX-QSFP-40G-SR4 listed in Fiberstore is just US$ 85.00 and F5-UPG-SFP+-R is US$ 16.00.

• About OSNR, CD, PMD Improvements

On one hand, problems related to OSNR, CD and PMD are directly caused by optics, the fiber quality and other optical equipment. So it’s highly recommended choose high quality equipment. On the other, such conditions also have relation to fiber optical technology. When 40G technology becomes maturer and maturer, simplified materials can be designed, and better solutions can be put forward.

With the increasing demands for higher-bandwidth applications, the trend of migration from 10G to 40G is inevitable. With the above methods migration challenges and solutions, you can upgrade to 40G network efficiently. Besides, to help customers achieve 40G smoothly, Fiberstore provides various 40G fiber optics products with high quality at lower prices. For more information about 40G solutions, please visit Fiberstore with no hesitation.

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When we try to compare the fiber optic cable with copper cable, we may be thrown into trouble most of the time. Actually, it is too difficult to be impartial because the pros and cons between them are so clear. Apparently, fiber optic cable outweighs copper cable in the aspect of speed or bandwidth. It is much faster than copper cable, carries much higher bandwidth, has less interference and is lighter, stronger and more durable as well. Considering this situation, today we will just take a closer look at the advantages of fiber optic cable over copper cable.

It’s known the copper cable transmits data by electrical impulses, while fiber optic cable, which is made up by hair-like glass fibers, sends signals by carrying light impulses transmitted by a LED or laser. The infrared light inside the fiber optic cable would bounce at blistering speeds until it reaches the other end of the fibers. After the optical receiver receives the signals, then the signals would be converted into data. Since the fiber optic cable transmits data by lasers, the speed of it must be much higher than copper cable. In this text, fiber optic cable advantages such as bandwidth will be talked about in details below.

Speed here refers to the amount of data that can be transmitted per unit of time. Needless to say, fiber optic cable has a great win over copper cable in speed. For example, traditional copper lines can usually carry roughly 3,000 phone calls at one time, while fiber optic cables used in a similar system could carry around 31,000 calls.

Unlike copper whose distance limitation is limited to 100m, fiber optic cable allows the distance to range 300m to 80km, depending on the style of cable, wavelength, and network. For instance, in Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) applications, multi-mode fiber (MMF), when used in combination with 1000BASE-SX SFPs (eg. MGBSX1) using 850nm wavelength, is bale to realize 550m link length. Or other, when single-mode fiber (SMF) works in corporation with 1000BASE-LX SFP (eg. EX-SFP-1GE-LX) using 1310nm wavelength, the possible link length is 10km.

Bandwidth is the key point that determines the speed of the cables. Because of the higher bandwidth, fiber optic cable can have the extremely high frequency ranges to carry data. This would be a thousand times the bandwidth of copper cable. If copper cable transmits data at high frequencies, its signal strength will diminish. Without any exaggeration, the fiber optic cable can go more than one hundred times further, while the copper cable could only hold a candle.

Fiber optic cable permits extremely reliable data transmission. Because the core is made of glass, which is an insulator, no electric current can flow through a fiber optic cable. Besides, fiber immune to many environmental factors that have effects on copper cable, immune to electromagnetic interference and radio-frequency interference (EMI/RFI), crosstalk, impedance problems, and more. You can run fiber next to industrial equipment without worry. In addition, fiber is also less susceptible to temperature fluctuations than copper is, and it can be submerged in water. More importantly, fiber optic cable can carry more information with greater fidelity than copper wire can. That’s why telephone and CATV companies are converting to fiber.

Fiber is light in weight, thin, and more durable than copper cable. Additionally, fiber optic cable has pulling specifications that are up to 10 times greater than copper cable’s. Its small size (just as the below figure shows) makes it easier to handle, and it takes up much less space in cabling ducts. Although fiber is still more difficult to terminate than copper, advancements in connectors are making termination easier. In addition, fiber is actually easier to test than copper cable.

Fiber optic systems are already being used in the backbone applications of most major companies because of their reliability and upgradability. All up, it is fairly safe to assume that, just as digital telephony has done in the past, so fiber optic technology will move ahead with big steps leaving the traditional copper wire behind.

Fiberstore is a company offering fiber connectivity network solutions for carriers, ISPs, content providers and networks, and also the global market innovator and application technology pioneer in the field of optical network devices and interconnection, especially on fiber optic cables and fiber optic transceivers which are fully compatible with major brands, such as Cisco Linksys MGBSX1 and Juniper Networks EX-SFP-1GE-LX mentioned above. If you have any further questions about fiber optic networks, or you want to purchase fiber optic items, please visit Fiberstore.

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Owing to the rapid progresses made in fiber optical technology, more and more networking infrastructure installations and upgrades choose fiber optic links for high-data-rate transmission. There is no question that compared with copper solutions, fiber optics provides greater bandwidth, more reliable data transmission, and immunity to electromagnetic interference and radio-frequency interference (EMI/RFI), crosstalk, impedance problems, and more. For constituting such fiber optic links, fiber optical modules, one of the fast-growing transmission components, are instrumental, and work well in these applications where high-bandwidth and long-distance transmission are needed.

Along with the fiber optical technology advances, fiber optical modules have been constantly designed and re-innovated, so as to better facilitate electrical-optical-electrical signal conversion. They are classified into several categories according to different standards regarding package, transmission mode, data rate and power supply. This text will talk about every classification standard in details.

MSAs (Multi-Source Agreements) are agreements between multiple manufacturers, system integrators, and suppliers, specifying parameters for system components and their guideline values, such as the electrical and optical interfaces, mechanical dimensions and electro-magnetic values. The equipment vendors follow these MSA defined values for designing their systems to ensure interoperability between interface modules. The form-factor or the MSA-type is needed so that the transceiver can mechanically and electrically fit into a given switch, router, etc. Transceiver MSAs define mechanical form factors including electric interface as well as power consumption and cable connector types. There are various MSA types: SFP (eg. E1MG-TX), SFP+, QSFP and so on.

When talking about this standard, single-mode optical modules and multi-mode optical modules come to the central point.

• Single-mode Optical Modules

Single-mode optical modules, or single-mode transceivers, just as their name show, are designed to work over single-mode fibers (SMFs). Compared with multi-mode fiber (MMF), SMF fiber core is smaller and the wavelength of the laser is narrower, meaning that while transmitting optical signals, SMF is able to deliver higher bandwidth at the much longer distances, like 2km, 10km, 40km, 60km, 80km and 120km transmission. Commonly-seen single-mode transceiver types include 10GBASE-LR, 1000BASE-LR, 1000BASE-BX, etc..

• Multi-mode Optical Modules

Multi-mode optical modules, or multi-mode transceivers, operate over MMF which uses a much bigger core and usually uses a longer wavelength of light. Thus, the optics used in MMF has a higher capability to gather light from the laser, for short distance transmission, with distance reach ranging from 100m to 500m. 10GBASE-SR is one of the most widely-used multi-mode transceiver types, such as AFBR-703SDZ-IN2. This Avago Intel compatible 10GBASE-SR SFP+ transceiver listed in Fiberstore works over MMF with 850nm laser light for 300m distance reach.

• The connection between two network devices is realized with the help of protocols. It is imperative to know which protocol and data rate the switch or router supports. There are various protocols such as Ethernet, Fiber Channel (FC), InfiniBand, SONET/SDH, CPRI and so on. Each of these protocols supports their own data rates. For example Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) can range from 1Gb/s to 100Gb/s, while FC ranges from 1GFC (1.0625Gb/s) to 16GFC (14.025Gb/s).

• As for power supply, there are built-in switching power transceiver and eternal power supply transceiver. The built-in switching power transceiver is designed for the carrier grade power. It supports equipment power protection, filters, and a wide power supply voltage regulator, reducing the external point of failure arising from the mechanical contact. By contrast,the external power supply transceiver is made for multi-use civilian equipment, and it is compact and cheap.

• Of course, the classification standards of fiber optical modules are not limited to those three points mentioned above. Other standards are also workable, such as the network management standard. It’s known that there are managed optical modules and unmanaged optical modules. The former type allows additional network monitoring with fault detection, free from configuration function. By contrast, the latter, without monitoring function, allows automatic communication of the devices that are connected to unmanaged optical modules.

When your networking projects call for fiber optical modules for fiber optic links, these classification standards will work, since they help you to choose the right fiber optical modules for applications to ensure the reliable data transmission. Fiberstore offers an ocean of fiber optical modules which are fully compatible with major brands, including the Brocade E1MGTX, and Avago Intel AFBR-703SDZ-IN2 mentioned above. For more information about fiber optical modules, you can visit Fiberstore.

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