Tag Archives: SFP-10G-LR

Brief Introduction for 10 Gigabit Ethernet

The demand for high bandwidth promotes the development of data transmission technology. Ethernet standard continuously evolves to meet fast speed need, from 100BASE, 1000BASE to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Meanwhile, the data carrying technology also develops to provide great bandwidth for transporting data with low cost, such as the copper and fibre cable as well as optical transceiver module.

10 Gigabit Ethernet CablingFigure1. 10 Gigabit Ethernet Cabling

Media for 10 Gigabit Ethernet: Copper and Fibre

In 10 Gigabit Ethernet, copper and fibre are used to transport data. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Copper is more affordable and easy to install. It acts the best when used in short lengths, typically 100 meters or less. But when deployed over long distance, electromagnetic signal characteristics will influence its performance. Besides, bundling copper cabling can cause interference, which makes it difficult to employ as a comprehensive backbone. So copper cabling are widely used in PCs and LANs communication network instead of campus or long-distance transmission.

Compared with copper, fibre cabling is usually used for long distance communication among campus, and environments that need protection from interference, such as manufacturing areas. In addition, fibre cabling is more reliable and less susceptible to attenuation, which makes it suitable for data transmission distance over 100 meters. But fibre still has drawbacks. It’s more costly than copper.

The Evolution of 10 Gigabit Ethernet Cabling

Since 10 GbE technologies have changed, so have the cabling technologies. There are two main standards: IEEE802.3ae and IEEE802.3ak. Factors covered in these standards like transmission distance and equipment being used are helpful to determine the cabling strategy.

  • IEEE802.3ae

IEEE802.3ae standard updates the existing IEEE802.3 standard for 10GbE fibre transmission. The new standard defines several new media types for LAN, metropolitan area network (MAN) and wide area network (WAN) connectivity.

10GBASE-SR – it supports 10GbE transmission over standard multimode fibre (850 nm) for distances of 33 and 86 meters. The SR standard also supports up to 300 meters using the new 2000MHz/km multimode fibre (laser optimized). This one is the lowest-cost optics for 10GbE.

10GBASE-LR – it uses optics (1310nm) and supports single-mode fibre up to 10 km.

10GBASE-LX4 – it can support multimode fibre for distances up to 300 meters using Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM). The LX4 standard also supports single mode fibre for up to 10 Km. LX4 is more expensive than both SR and LR because it requires four times the optical and electrical circuitry in addition to optical multiplexers.

10GBASE-ER – it uses optics (1550nm) to support single mode fibre up to 30 km.

  • IEEE802.3ak / 10GBASE-T

10GBASE-T is the latest proposed 10GbE standard for use with unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) style cabling. This standard is to improve the performance and increase the transmission distance at a lower cost. Category 5 (Cat 5) and Category 6 (Cat 6) are the most common cabling systems being installed today. But Cat 5 can’t meet the bandwidth demands of 10GbE’s transmission. To meet the needs of 10GbE, manufacturers create Category 6A (Cat 6A), designed with existing Cat 6 cable but measured and specified to higher frequencies. In addition to Cat 6A, 10GBASE-T will operate on Category 7 (Cat 7) cables.

10GbE Transceivers

Except the cabling, transceivers also need to be considered for the network connectivity. Transceivers provide the interface between the equipment sending and receiving data. 10GbE has four defined transceiver types, including XENPAK, X2, XFP and SFP+ (Small Form-factor Pluggable Plus). These transceivers are pluggable and are compliant with 802.3ae standard.

Among them, SFP+ is the smallest 10G form factor. And it can interoperate with XENPAK, X2, XFP interface on the same link. Fiberstore provides a number of interfaces attempted to satisfy different objectives including support for MMF and SMF compatibility, such as SFP-10G-SR, SFP-10G-LR, SFP-10G-ER, SFP-10G-ZR, etc. For example, SFP-10G-SR transceiver module can support 300 meters data transmission distance over 850 nm multimode fibre. And SFP-10G-LR module supports the link length up to 10 kilometers over 1310 nm single mode fibre.

10 Gigabit Ethernet Transceiver

Figure2. 10 Gigabit Ethernet Transceiver

As the corresponding cabling technology gets great improvement, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is becoming more affordable and pervasive. 10G network brings us higher speed. For 10G network connectivity, SFP+ transceivers are recommended to transport data over copper or fibre cabling.

Related Article: Cisco SFP-10G-SR: All You Need to Know

SFP Transceiver for Cisco 3560 Series Switches

Optical Transceiver Module

The optical transceiver Module used for optical-to electrical conversion is a key component in optical communication systems. Fibre Optic Transceiver Module is a self-contained component that can both transmit and receive. Usually, it is inserted in devices such as routers or network interface cards which provide one or more transceiver module slot (e.g GBIC, SFP, SFP+, XFP). SFP module is a compact optical module used in optical communications. The SFP is short for small form-factor pluggable and also called Mini-GBIC (the upgrade version of GBIC). The SFP module has many applications in both telecommunication and data communications. This article focus on picking SFP transceivers for Cisco 3560 switches.

Cisco 3560

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 series is a line of enterprice-class switches that include support for PoE, Qos, And advanced security features such as ACLs. These switches, shown in Figure 1, are ideal access layer switches for small enterprise LAN access or branch-office converged network environments.

Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series Switches

Figure 1.Catalyst 3560

The Cisco Catalyst 3560 series supports forwarding rates of 32 Gbps to 128Gbps (Catalyst 3560-E switch series). The Catalyst 3560 series switches are available in different fixed configurations:

  • Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Eternet connectivity
  • Up to 48 10/100/1000 ports, plus four small form-factor pluggable ports
  • Optional 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in the Catalyst 3560-E models
  • Optional integrated PoE (Cisco prestandard and IEEE 802.3af); up to 24 ports with 15.4 watts or 48 ports with 7.3 watts

Since this article is discuss module options for Cisco 3560 series, to learn more about the Catalyst 3560 series of switches, see the data sheet of Cisco Catalyst 3560 series.

Optical Transceiver for Cisco 3560 series switches

The Cisco switch product lines are widely deployed globally, in large part because of the flexibility they provide for add-on options.not only does the Cisco IOS have the richest set of features available relative to any other network operating system, but the IOS is also tailor fit to each Cisco networking device, switches in particular.

To illustrate the options available, which are literally too voluminous to list here, we focus on the Catalyst 3560 switches. The Catalyst 3560 switches have Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) ports that support a number of SFP transceiver modules.

Here is a list of the SFP modules supported on one or more types of 3560 switches:

Fast Ethernet SFP modules:

  • 100BASE-FX SFP (multimode fibre-optic [MMF]) for 2 km
  • 100BASE-LX10 SFP (single-mode fibre-optic [SMF]) for 2km
  • 100BASE-BX10 SFP (SMF) for 10km
  • 100BASE-EX SFP (SMF) for 40km
  • 100BASE-ZX SFP (SMF) for 80km

Gigabit Ethernet SFP modules:

  • 1000BASE-SX SFP 50/62.5 um (MMF) up to 550/220m
  • 1000BASE-LX/LH SFP (SMF/MMF) up to 10/0.550 km
  • 1000BASE-ZX SFP (SMF) up to 70 km
  • 1000BASE-BX10-D SFP and 1000BASE-BX10-U SFP (SMF) up to 10 km
  • 1000BASE-T SFP (copper wire transceiver) 10m

10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP modules:

  • 10GBASE-SR SFP (MMF) up 400m (SFP-10G-SR)
  • 10GBASE-SX SFP (MMF) up to 400m (supporting extended temperature range)
  • 10GBASE-LRM SFP (MMF) up to 220m
  • FET-10G SFP (MMF) up to 100m (for Nexus fabric uplinks)
  • 10GBASE-LR SFP (SMF) up to 10km (SFP-10G-LR)
  • 10GBASE-ER SFP (SMF) up to 40km
  • 10GBASE-ZR SFP (SMF) up to 80 km

10G-SR SFP for Cisco 3560

Fiberstore SFP-10G-SR

40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethenet modules are supported on high-end Cisco devices, such as the Catalyst 6500, the CRS router, the ASR 9000 Series router, and the Nexus 7000 Series switch.

Read More Article About SFP Transceivers:

Optical Transceivers for FIs

Understanding FIs

A FI is the core component of a UCS solution. FIs are typically configured as highly available clustered pairs in production environments. It’s possible to run a single FI-based design as a proof of concept test deployment before actually implementing it in production. FIs provide the following two capabilities:

  1. Network connectivity to both LAN and SAN
  2. UCS infrastructure management through the embedded management software, UCSM, for both hardware and software management

FIs are available in two generations, namely Cisco UCS 6100 series and Cisco UCS 6200 series. The core functionality is the same in both generations; however, UCS 6200 series has a newer generation Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), higher throughput, and increased number of physical ports. Both generations can be upgraded to the latest UCSM software.

FIs provide converged ports. Depending on the physical Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) transceivers and FI software configuration, each port can be configured in different ways. Cisco 200 series FI ports can be configured as Ethernet ports, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) ports, or Fibre Channel (FC) ports. On the other hand, 6100 series converged ports only support Ethernet and FCoE (they also support FC, but only in the expansion slot).

Cisco 6200 Series switches

In production, FIs are deployed in clustered pairs to provide high availability. Cisco-supported implementation requires that clustered FIs be identical. The only possibility for having different FIs in a cluster is during a cluster upgrade.

Exploring Connectivity Transceivers for FIs

A variety of SFP transceivers are available for The Cisco UCS 6200 series. These transceivers provide south-bound IOM connectivity and north-bound network and storage connectivity. They are based on industry-standard SFP+ specifications.

Transceivers can be selected depending on the technology, for example, Ethernet or FC, and also according to the distance requirements. For shorter distances between FIs, IOMs, and north-bound network switches, twinax cables with integrated SFP is an economical alternative as compared to fibre optic SFP.

The most commonly used transceivers include following:

  • Cisco SFP-10G-SR: This is a multimode optical fibre 10Gbps Ethernet SFP that can be used for distances up to 400 meters.
  • Cisco SFP-10G-LR: This is a single-mode optical fibre 10Gbps Ethernet SFP that can be used for distances up to 10 Km.
  • Cisco SFP-10G-TET: This is a low power consuming multimode fibre optic 10Gbps Ethernet SFP that can be used for distances up to 100 meters.
  • Cisco SFP-H10GB-CuxM: These are the twinax cables providing low cost 10Gbps Ethernet connectivity and are available in 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 meter configurations.
  • Cisco SFP-H10GB-ACU10M: This is a 10-meter-long twinax cable providing 10Gbps Ethernet. At a length of 10 meters, this cable requires active transceivers at both ends.
  • Cisco GLC-T: 1000BASE-T SFP or SFP-compatible ports only,these are based on the SFP Multi Source Agreement (MSA) and compact RJ-45 connector assembly. For SFP-compatible ports only.
  • Cisco GLC-SX-MMD: These modules supporting dual data-rate of 1.25Gbps/1.0625Gbps and 550m transmission distance with MMF, for SFP-compatible ports only.
  • Cisco GLC-LH-SMD: These modules supporting dual data-rate of 1.25Gbps/1.0625Gbps and 10km transmission distance with SMF, for SFP-compatible ports only.
  • DS-SFP-FCxG-xW: These are multi-mode and single-mode fibre optic FC transceivers that are available at 2, 4, and 8Gbps transfer speeds.

1000Base-SX SFP Transceiver

Where to buy These Optical Transceivers

Fiberstore provide a full range of optical transceivers, such as SFP+ (SFP Plus) transceiver, X2 transceiver, XENPAK transceiver, XFP transceiver, SFP (Mini GBIC) transceiver, GBIC transceiver, CWDM/DWDM transceiver, 40G QSFP+ & CFP, 3G-SDI video SFP, WDM Bi-Directional transceiver and PON transceiver. All our fibre transceivers are 100% compatible with major brands like Cisco, HP, Juniper, Nortel, Force10, D-link, 3Com. They are backed by a lifetime warranty, and you can buy with confidence. We also can customise optical transceivers to fit your specific requirements.