Understand 100G Ethernet Standards

People want 100G Ethernet, meanwhile, they want to reduce the cost and increase the port density to the most. Driven by the combination of elements like that, 100G Ethernet standards and related optical transceivers have improved a lot in the past few years. As so many 100G Ethernet standards and package form factors are used, people might be confused by them easily. This post offers a detailed introduction about 100G Ethernet standards.

The first 100G Ethernet standard was approved in 2010. After that tremendous changes have happened in 100G technology in many aspects. The first generation of the 100G standards use the 10x10G lane in electrical signaling. For media signaling, some use 10x10G and some use 4x10G. The second generation 100G Ethernet standards apply 4x10G signaling for both electrical and media. In terms of transmission distances, different standards can support different transmission distance. Now there are more choices for transmission distances ranging from 1 meter to 40 kilometers. Meanwhile, the package form factors also changed a lot. The first 100G transceivers CFP is much larger than that of the new one QSFP28. To offer an intuitive way to illustrate these 100G Ethernet standards, I will list them in the following table.

Name	Distance	Media Type	Module Type	Media Signaling	Electrical Signaling	Standard
100GBASE-KP4	1m	Backplane	Backplane	4x25	4x25	June 2014 IEEE 802.3bj
100GBASE-KR4	1m	Backplane	Backplane	4x25	4x25	June 2014 IEEE 802.3bj
100GBASE-CR4	5m	Twinax Copper	CFP2, CFP4 QSFP28	4x25	10x10	June 2014 IEEE 802.3bj
100GBASE-CR10	7m	Twinax Copper	CXP, CFP2 CFP4, QSFP28	10x10	4x25	June 2010 IEEE 802.3ba
100GBASE-SR4	OM3: 70m OM4: 100m	Parallel MMF	CFP2, CFP4 CPAK, QSFP28	4x25	10x10	March 2015 IEEE 802.3bm
100GBASE-SR10	OM3: 100m OM4: 150m	Parallel MMF	CFP, CFP2, CFP4 CPAK, CXP	10x10	10x10	June 2010 IEEE 802.3ba
10x10-2km	2km	Duplex SMF	CFP	10x10	10x10	March 2011 10x10 MSA
10x10-10km	10km	Duplex SMF	CFP	10x10	10x10	August 2011 10x10 MSA
100GBASE-LR4	10km	Duplex SMF	CFP, CFP2, CFP4 CPAK, QSFP28	4x25	10x10	June 2010 IEEE 802.3ba
10x10-40km	40km	Duplex SMF	CFP	10x10	10x10	August 2011 10x10 MSA
100GBASE-ER4	40km	Duplex SMF	CFP, CFP2	4x25	10x10	June 2010 IEEE 802.3ba

The above table contains the 100G standards that published by IEEE and MSA, which are listed by the transmission distance from the top to the bottom. According to reports from many marketing reports, 100G optical component market will surge in 2016. FS.COM provide 100G solutions including transceivers, patch cable, cable management products, etc. Kindly contact sales@fs.com or visit FS.COM for more details about 100G Ethernet and products, if you are interested.

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Cabling With High Density Push-Pull Tab Patch Cords

It is inevitable to plug fiber patch cables from the patch panels, switches or cassettes in today’s data center cabling. However, this simple movement becomes harder and harder nowadays. Why? Both the data rate of every optical fiber and the fiber counts being used are increased to support high data rate up to 40/100G or more. Thus, the cabling density increased largely with the deployment of 40/100G Ethernet network. Finger access to every patch cable that is loaded on the patch panel, switches or cassettes becomes difficult. Especially for these patch cables in the middle of the space.

For fiber patch cords attached with connectors like LC, things become more complex. Because this type of connectors are usually locked in the port with a latch on the connector body. If you want to plug out a patch cord with LC connectors, you should firstly unlock the connector from the port by clicking the latch with is with small size (shown in the following picture). Usually an external tool is used to unplug the specific connector in a high density cabling. It seems a problem doesn’t matter much in the whole cabling. However, during practical cabling, network engineer could be headache about this annoying problem. To find an easy and elegant way to solve this finger access problem, a new type of patch cords was invented, which is designed for high density cabling and is known as push-pull tab patch cords.

What Is High Density Push-pull Tab Fiber Patch cable?

Compare with the traditional patch cords. This new type patch cord is attached with a connector with a push-pull tab, which can perfectly solve the fiber access problem in high density cabling. Except the additional tab for pushing and pull, these connectors don’t change much from the traditional ones that attached to patch cords. But this little change makes a great difference. The following is offering you the details about this novel product.

High density push-pull tab fiber patch cords are usually attached with LC or MPO connectors, as these two types of connector are currently the most popular in high density cabling like 40G, 100G, 120G or more. The following pictures shows the details of these two types of connectors with push-pull tab.

The one in the left of the following picture is an LC connector attached on push-pull tab patch cable. It’s of standard LC size. When the tab is pulled the LC connector would be unlocked from the port easily, cause the tab is linked to the latch of the LC connector. Once the LC connector is unlocked, the patch cords would be smoothly plugged out from the port and other patch cords around it by pulling the tab slightly. As for MPO connector with push-pull tab shown in the following picture on the right side. Finger access becomes easier. The tab can greatly simplify the use of MPO connectivity when manual access to the release slider and rear portion of the connector is restricted. In this way, easy insertion and extraction of MPO patch cords can be achieved.

Get More From Push-pull Tab Patch Cable

Is finger access the only advantage of push-pull tab patch cords. Definitely NO. The following illustrating will surely make you exciting about push-pull tab patch cable.

• Flexibility and adjustability: it has been proved that push-pull tab can increase the cabling density by 30% to 50%, which can satisfy the future high density cabling requirements for 120G or more.
• Reliability: To reach the specific connector you want, you might loosen or remove other connectors around it, which can highly increase the reliability of the network.
• Cost-save and time-save: it is clear that with push-pull tab patch cords, cabling becomes easy and elegant with higher ROI.

Fiberstore Push-Pull Tab Fiber Patch Cable Solutions

If you are looking for a simple and easy high density patch cabling solution, push-pull tab patch cords provided by Fiberstore can satisfy your requirements. The following chart is the most common applications of push-pull tab patch cords for your references.

Application	Patch Cords	Cable Type	Connectors on Both Ends
10G to 10G Cabling	Duplex LC Push-pull Tab Patch Cord	OM3/OM4/Single-mode	Duplex LC	Duplex LC
40G to 40G Cabling	12-fiber MPO Push-pull Tab Trunk Cable	OM3/OM4/Single-mode	MPO (male/female)	MPO (male/female)
40G to 10G Cabling	12-fiber MPO to 8 LC Push-pull Tab Break out Cable	OM3/OM4/Single-mode	MPO (male/female)	4 Duplex LC
100G to 100G Cabling	24-fiber MPO Push-pull Tab Trunk Cable	OM3/OM4/Single-mode	MPO (male/female)	MPO (male/female)

For more details and customized solution of push-pull tab patch cords, you can always access Fiberstore by FS.COM or emailing us at sales@fs.com

Source: http://www.fiber-optic-tutorial.com/cabling-with-high-density-push-pull-tab-patch-cords.html