Standards for 10Gb Ethernet

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3 working group has published several standards relating to 10GbE (10Gb ETHERNET) in the last few years, now let us learn about these standards. § 802.3ae-2002 - ETHERNET over Fiber ( 10GBASE-SR, 10GBASE-LR, 10GBASE-ER,10GBASE-SW, 10GBASE-LW, 10GBASE-EW and -LX4 PMDs ) § 802.3ak-2004 - 10GBASE-CX4 COPPER TWIN-AX § 802.3an-2006 - 10GBASE-T- COPPER TWISTED PAIR § 802.3aq-2006 - 10GBASE-LRM 10 Gbit/s (1,250 MB/s) Ethernet over multimode fiber § 802.3ap-2007 - COPPER BACKPLANE -KR AND KX4 PMDs In order to support different 10GbE physical layer standards, many interfaces consist of a standard socket into which different PHY modules may be plugged. 10GbE has four defined transceiver types. These four types are: § XENPAK: The first MSA for 10GE and it had the largest form factor, they are used mainly in LAN switches. § XPAK: The later MSA with smaller form factors than XENPAK, they are used primarily in Network Interface Cards (NIC) and Host Bus Adapter (HBA) markets for use in Servers and NAS devices § X2: Later than XPAK MSA and with a much smaller form factors, they are also used mainly in LAN switches like XENPAK. § XFP: Came after X2 and it is smaller than X2 § SFP+: The enhanced small form-factor pluggable transceiver, it is generally called SFP+ transceiver. Based on the SFP transceiver, it is smaller and utilizes lower power than XFP transceiver.It increases the capacity of port density and became a good alternative for XFP. SFP+ transceivers have a common physical form factor with legacy SFP transceivers and allowing higher port density than XFP transceiver and the re-use of existing designs. To meet the growing market demand, SFP+ transceiver has become the most popular socket on 10GbE systems. One of the differences between XFP and SFP+ is that the SFP+ transceivers only does optical to electrical conversion, it doesn't do any clock or data recovery like XFP transceiver. SFP+ Transceivers are commonly available in below categories: § 10GBASE-SR: "Short Reach",Multi-Mode Fiber § 10GBASE-LR : "Long Reach",Single-Mode Fiber § 10GBASE-LRM: "Long Reach",Multi-Mode Fiber § 10GBASE-ER: "Extended reach",Single-Mode Fiber § 10GBASE-ZR: "Non-standardExtended reach",Single-Mode Fiber