10G Connectivity – Comparing XFP With SFP+

by Fiber-MART.COM

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.

 

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.