What to Notice When Buying a SFP+ DAC Twinax Cable?

What’s SFP+ DAC Twinax Cable?

10G SFP+ DAC is established on copper inter-connectivity by using a twinax cable assembly to connect with SFP+ housing. It substitutes the costly optical transceiver required in the Ethernet deployment and tremendously decreases the power consumption, latency and installation time. Based on above, it’s the prior choice of SFP+ DAC to adapt to modern 10G network with requirement of short-distance and high-speed. With a limited transmitted length of up to 12m, SPF+ DAC is very much general used in intra-rack and inter-rack connections. such as interconnected with top-of-rack switches and servers, as well as between storage devices in one rack or neighboring racks.

 

Active or Passive?

Generally speaking, SFP+ DAC active cable is much expensive than SFP+ DAC passive cable. This is because of it needs DC power to integrate signal processing circuitry into the built-in connectors of SFP+ DAC active cable with a length link of up to 12m, while the passive cable doesn’t have electrical components so it requires little or no power to operate. Suggestion on how to choose active or passive depends on the transmit distance you require: passive for transmit link no greater than 7m but active is for more than 7m.

 

Branded or Compatible?

An OEM SFP+ DAC is much more costly than a compatible SFP+ DAC. Based on identical industry standard, users are strongly suggested to buy compatible SPF+ DAC twinax cable with competitive price but same performance as branded ones. By rigorously testing and verifying, 10Gtek supplies SFP+ to SFP+ copper twinax cable which are compatible with prevailing manufactures such as Cisco, Juniper, Arista, Brocade and Extreme etc., in this way, cost-effective is no more a obstacle to connect with various brands of devices.

 

AWG and Length

 

Wire Gauge is another important factor to consider SFP+ DAC twinax cable, which is in different specs of 24AWG, 26AWG, 28AWG and 30AWG. To explain, 24AWG(active) is adapted to a length of up to 12m while 30AWG(active) can support a length of up to 7m only. That is to say, the longer distance of transmission, the lower AWG rating is required.

 

Can SFP+ DAC Twinax Cable be Connected to SFP Ports?

Yes, you can plug SFP+ DAC twinax cable to SFP ports because of its attribute of backward compatibility. But reversely SFP cable is not compatible to SFP+ ports, even it can be plugged into SFP+ ports but that won’t work because it’s not a 10Gb/s data rate design of SFP cable.