Tag Archives: QSFP+ Breakout Cables

QSFP to SFP+Breakout Cable Overview

QSFP+ (Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable Plus) cables offer a high density, high bandwidth, cost-effective solution for a number of markets and applications including switches, routers, HBA’s, top rated computing and mass storage sub-systems by mfr’s such as IBM, qLogic, Cisco, etc. QSFP+ cables like QSFP to QSFP trunk cable and QSFP to SFP+ breakout cable are created for data rates up to 40Gb/s supporting Fibre Channel, Ethernet, SDH/SONET and Infiniband standards.

What Is Breakout Cable?

Breakout cable is a hybrid solution. In a breakout cable, each fibre is treated like a separate unit, complete with a sheath and strength member. This design eliminates the necessity for a breakout kit, as the sheath allow you to attach connectors easily.

Breakout cable lets fibre subunits move freely, and so they protect each fibre due to their thicker coating/strength member arrangement. Each fibre subunit is configured as a tight tube. Breakout cables also come designed with a separate strength member similar to the loose-tube design.

Breakout cable is really an optical fibre cable containing several jacketed simplex optical fibres packaged together in an outer jacket. This can be different from distribution-style cable, in which tight-buffered fibres are bundled together, with simply the outer cable jacket of the cable protecting them. The style of breakout-style cable adds strength for ruggedized drops, though the cable is greater and much more expensive than distribution-style cable. Breakout cable is acceptable for brief riser and plenum applications as well as use in conduits, in which a quite simple cable run is planned to avoid the use of any splicebox or spliced fibre pigtails.

Because each fibre is individually reinforced, the cable can be easily divided into individual fibre lines. Each simplex cable inside the outer jacket might be broken out after which continue like a patch cable, for instance in a fibre to the desk application in an business building. This permits connector termination without requiring special junctions, and can reduce or eliminate the need for fibre optic patch panels or an optical distribution frame. Breakout cable requires terminations to be done with simple connectors, which may be preferred for some situations. A more common solution today is the use of a fanout kit that adds a jacket to the very fine strands of other cable types.

QSFP to SFP+ breakout cables create a great cost-effective interconnect means to fix IT professionals by giving much needed space for data centres and cost cuts. QSFP to SFP+ breakout cable provides inexpensive and low power consumption interconnect solution for 40-Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, QDR InfiniBand, 10 Gigabit applications and other industry standards. We provide QSFP+ to SFP+ passive copper breakout DAC, QSFP to SFP+ breakout AOC and QSFP to 8 x LC AOC. Customised cables can be found in various lengths along with other options.

QSFP to SFP+ Breakout Cable

Figure 1 A QSFP+ to 4 SFP+ Breakout Cable

QSFP to SFP+ breakout cables produce a great cost-effective interconnect strategy to IT professionals by giving necessary space for data centers and price cuts. These cables permit you to connect your QSFP+ and SFP+ switches and network cards without upgrading your entire data center or storage array. They can be used for QDR infiniBand, 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 10Gigabit applications. Each QSFP to SFP+ breakout cable includes 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 side. We currently provide several lengths to support your installation requirements.

QSFP to SFP+ breakout cables provide low cost and low power consumption interconnect solution for 40-Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, QDR InfiniBand, 10 Gigabit applications and other industry standards.