In the telecommunication industry, pulses of light are transmitted at high speed and with great accuracy in Gigabit Ethernet by using various optical products, including optical transceivers. There are numerous different form factors and optics types available in telecommunication market, such as XFP, GBIC, SFP/SFP+, or other transceivers. Are you confused by them? The following passages will provide information about these three standards for optical transceivers.

The XFP (10 Gigabit Small Form Factor Pluggable) is a standard for transceivers for high-speed computer network and telecommunication links that use optical fiber. It is the first small form factor 10GbE optics, not dependent on protocol. The specifications of XPF were developed by the XFP Multi Source Agreement (MSA) Group. Generally, it operates at optical wavelengths of 850nm, 1310nm or 1550nm. Fiberstore’s Cisco XFP10GLR-192SR-L is suitable for 10 GbE datacom (belly-to-belly for high density applications) and storage area network (SAN/NAS) applications based on the IEEE 802.3ae and Fibre Channel standards. Here is the picture of this product.

A GBIC (gigabit interface converter) is typically used in gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channels. By offering a standard, hot swappable electrical interface, one gigabit port can support a wide range of physical media, from copper to long-wave single-mode optical fiber, at lengths of hundreds of kilometers. As a standard for transceivers, it is non-proprietary and defined by the Small Form Factor Committee in document number 8053i. Moreover, its flexibility makes it attractive in networking equipment, as it is opposed to fixed physical interface configurations.

As a variation of the GBIC, also known as mini-GBIC, the small form-factor pluggable transceiver (SFP) is a compact, hot-swappable transceiver. It interfaces a network device motherboard (for a switch, router, media converter or similar device) to a fiber optic or copper networking cable, applicable to Fast Ethernet of Gigabit Ethernet applications. SFP+ can be referred to as an expansion of the SFP standard. It is a 10GbE optics using the same physical form factor as a gigabit SFP.

XFP and SFP/SFP+ transceivers are both 10G optical modules, and share the same features with other 10G transceivers. The main difference lies in their sizes. That is SFP+ is more compact sized than XFP. What’s more, SFP+ complies with IEEE802.3, SFF-8431, SFF-8432, while XFP conforms to XFP MSA.

GBIC transceivers came into existence earlier than SFPs. In addition to the differences in application fields mentioned in above paragraphs, their sizes also differ from each other. The bigger size of GBIC makes it not feasible to provide more number of interfaces on a line card or a switch since it occupies more space. In other words, SFP is half the volume of GBIC and can be configured double number of ports on the same panel. Besides these differences, actually, GBIC and SFP/SFP+ transceivers share almost the same functions.

Fiber optic transceiver modules, designed and built with industry standards, become the core devices in fast Gigabit Ethernet transmission. Fiberstore supplies a wide range of optical transceivers. Besides XFP, GBIC, SFP/SFP+ transceivers, XENPAK transceiver, CWDM/DWDM transceiver, 40G QSFP+ & CFP can all be found in Fiberstore. Certainly, the type Cisco X2-10GB-LRM is also available in Fiberstore. You can visit Fiberstore for more information about fiber optical transceivers.

Related Article:

http://www.fs.com/introduction-to-small-form-factor-pluggable-sfp-transceiver-modules-aid-22.html

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