High-density Cabling With MTP/MPO Connectors

With the expected increase in use of 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps, there is an increasing demand for higher and higher density fiber cabling solutions. Existing and emerging network technologies are driving the need for increased data rates and fiber usage in the data center. High-density cabling with MTP/MPO connectors is essential to address these trends to provide an easy migration from duplex fiber serial transmission to 12- and 24-fiber parallel optics transmission.

What Is MTP / MPO Connector

The MPO connector is a multi-fiber connector defined according to IEC 61754-7 and TIA/EIA 604-5 that can accommodate up to 72 fibers in the tiniest of spaces, comparable to an RJ45 connector. MPO connectors are most commonly used for 12 or 24 fibers. To achieve lower tolerances and better attenuation values, the US Conec developed the MTP connector which has better optical and mechanical quality than the MPO. MTP/MPO connectors provide the following benefits:

• A single 12 fiber connector at one end connects to multiple duplex connectors at the other end such as LC or SC
• Linking cables can be pre-connected to modules which are then placed in patch panels above the equipment
• Modules can be replaced and upgraded if required
• Scalable and adaptive to technology changes
• Module can be replaced with a fan-out and adapter plate if required

MTP / MPO Cable Assemblies

Since field termination is becoming widely available, MTP/MPO technology and MTP/MPO cable assemblies listed below are becoming more and more popular.

MTP / MPO Trunk Cable

MTP/MPO trunk cables are terminated with the MTP/MPO connectors. Trunk cables are available with 12, 24, 48 and 72 fibers. MTP/MPO trunk cables are designed for data center applications. The plug and play solutions uses micro core cable to maximize bend radius and minimize cable weight and size.

MTP / MPO Cable Harness

MTP / MPO cable harness is also called MTP / MPO breakout cable or MTP / MPO fan-out cable. This cable has a single MTP connector on one end That breaks out into 6 or 12 connectors (LC, SC, ST, etc.). The MTP / MPO harness assembly has Become a popular method for connections into high-port-count network switches.

Push-Pull MTP / MPO Patch Cable

A push and pull cable has the same components and internal-structure as the traditional patch cords, except a tab attached to the connector used for pushing or pulling the whole connector. This small push-pull tab looks simple but it is functional for high density cabling in 40/100G migration. The Push-Pull MTP/MPO patch cable for highest density allows high-density MTP presentation underneath SAN switches or proximate to super computers. It also provides access to 192 MTP connections in 2U of height space.  

The Trend for High-density Cabling

MTP/MPO style pre-terminated cables offer a market-leading low loss, fast and efficient connection system particularly suited to the data center and storage area network environment. The following factors lead to the trend for high-density cabling:

• Reduced cable size and increased air-flow to equipment
• High Density blade servers with hundreds of ports
• Virtualisation and cloud-computing
• High real-estate costs for rack space
• Reduced installation times
• Structured cabling approach (zone approach)
• 40G and 100G parallel optics

Fiberstore offers you a wide selection of MTP/MPO style pre-terminated cables including MTP/MPO trunk cable, MTP/MPO harness cable, Push-Pull MTP/MPO patch cable. Besides, we also provide Push-Pull tab LC patch cord and other related fiber cables. All these cables are with high flexibility and reliability. They can be customized according to your special requirements.  

Installing and Removing a QSFP+ Transceiver

Overview

The 40-Gigabit QSFP+ transceiver module is a hot-swappable, parallel fiber-optical module with four independent optical transmit and receive channels. These channels can terminate in another 40-Gigabit QSFP+ transceiver, or the channels can be broken out to four separate 10-Gigabit SFP+ transceivers. The QSFP+ transceiver module connects the electrical circuitry of the system with either a copper or an optical external network. The transceiver is used primarily in short reach applications in switches, routers, and data center equipment where it provides higher density than SFP+ modules.

Installing a QSFP+ Transceiver

The QSFP+ transceiver module can have either a bail-clasp latch or a pull-tab latch. Installation procedures for both types of latches are provided.

To install an QSFP+ transceiver module, follow these steps:
Step 1 Attach an ESD wrist strap to yourself and a properly grounded point on the chassis or the rack.
Step 2 Remove the QSFP+ transceiver module from its protective packaging.
Step 3 Check the label on the QSFP+ transceiver module body to verify that you have the correct model for your network.
Step 4 For optical QSFP+ transceivers, remove the optical bore dust plug and set it aside.
Step 5 For transceivers equipped with a bail-clasp latch:
a. Keep the bail-clasp aligned in a vertical position.
b. Align the QSFP+ transceiver in front of the module's transceiver socket opening and carefully slide the QSFP+ transceiver into the socket until the transceiver makes contact with the socket electrical connector. (See Figure1)

Step 6 For QSFP+ transceivers equipped with a pull-tab:
a. Hold the transceiver so that the identifier label is on the top.
b. Align the QSFP+ transceiver in front of the module's transceiver socket opening and carefully slide the QSFP+ transceiver into the socket until the transceiver makes contact with the socket electrical connector.
Step 7 Press firmly on the front of the QSFP+ transceiver with your thumb to fully seat the transceiver in the module's transceiver socket. (See Figure2)

Step 8 For optical QSFP+ modules, reinstall the dust plug into the QSFP+ transceivers optical bore until you are ready to attach the network interface cable. Do not remove the dust plug until you are ready to attach the network interface cable.

Removing a QSFP+ Transceiver

To remove a QSFP+ transceiver, follow these steps:
Step 1 For optical QSFP+ transceivers, disconnect the network interface cable from the QSFP+ transceiver connector.
Step 2 For QSFP+ transceivers equipped with a bail-clasp latch (See Figure3, top view):
a. Pivot the bail-clasp down to the horizontal position.
b. Immediately install the dust plug into the transceivers optical bore.
c. Grasp the sides of the QSFP+ transceiver and slide it out of the module socket.

Step 3 For QSFP+ transceivers equipped with a pull tab latch (See Figure3, bottom view):
a. Immediately install the dust plug into the transceiver's optical bore.
b. Grasp the tab and gently pull to release the transceiver from the socket.
c. Slide the transceiver out of the socket.
Step 4 Place the QSFP+ transceiver into an antistatic bag.

Conclusion

As 40 GbE are widely deployed, 40G transceiver optics are ubiquitous. A good practice and correct installation are very important for 40G network system, not only to protect the 40G transceiver optics and device from damage, but also to ensure a stable performance of the system. Fiberstore offers a wide range of 40G transceiver modules, such as QSFP-40G-LR4-S, QSFP-40G-SR4-S, QSFP-40G-ER4, etc. All these transceivers are tested in the original-brand switches to guarantee the high compatibility with major brands. For more information or quotation, please contact us via sales@fs.com.

Detailed Breakdown of MPO Connectors and 40G QSFP+ Transceivers

As the speed and transfer rates of computer hardware continue to grow alongside demand for ever-more data, new cabling becomes a necessity to keep up. Backbones for 40G on multimode fiber generally use MPO connectors which work with QSFP+ transceivers to allow four simultaneous 10G or better connections. An upgrade to QSFP+ can mean a significant reduction in overall cabling, which brings better reliability and cost-effectiveness.

MPO can work at higher speeds as well, able to bundle hundreds of individual fiber lines at once into a single terminator. As this is a relatively new standard, MPO connectors are not well-understood by many people. However, they're necessary to deliver the speeds promised by today's top-line backbones.

Things You Need To Know About MPO Connectors

1. What Is MPO

MPO is short for the industry acronym—"multi-fiber push on". The MPO connector is a multi-fiber connector which is most commonly defined by two documents: IEC-61754-7 and EIA/TIA-604-5. Here is a MPO connector with parallel optics transceiver and pinouts for 40G and 100G. Generally, the backbone cable that is permanently installed will end in connectors with pins inside mating adapters, effectively creating a "socket" type connection. Patchcords will have no pins since they are subject to damage because they simply protrude from the connector. Transceivers will be set up as jacks also, with pins inside the transceiver socket.

2. MPO vs MTP

One of the biggest areas of confusion is in regards to naming, with the cabling in question sometimes being referred to as MPO or MTP.

MTP is a particular brand of MPO-compliant fiber cables from USConec. They incorporate a number of revisions to the overall design, such as removable connector housings, while still remaining 100% intercompatible with other MPO products.

Whether they're worth the extra money is largely a matter of opinion at this point, although they have their benefits. The key point is that MTP is simply one specific implementation of MPO whose creators, undoubtedly, would like to see become more standard in the future.

Things You Need To Know About 40G QSFP+ Transceivers

QSFP+ transceiver is a hot-swappable, parallel fiber-optical module with four independent optical transmit and receive channels. These channels can terminate in another 40-Gigabit QSFP transceiver, or the channels can be broken out to four separate 10-Gigabit SFP+ transceivers.

The QSFP+ transceiver link length for either 40 Gigabit Ethernet or high density 10 Gigabit Ethernet application is up to 100 m using OM3 fiber or 150 m using OM4 fiber. These modules are designed to operate over multimode fiber systems using a nominal wavelength of 850nm. The electrical interface uses a 38 contact edge type connector. The optical interface uses an 8 or 12 fiber MTP (MPO) connector. For example, both HP JG325B compatible QSFP + transceiver and Arista QSFP-40G-SR4 compatible QSFP + transceiver from Fiberstore can achieve distance of 100m over OM3 fiber and 150 m over OM4 fiber.

Fiberstore offers a wide range of MPO connectors and 40G QSFP+ transceivers which are 100% compatible with many famous brands like Cisco, HP, Juniper, Nortel, Force10, D-link, 3Com. Besides, we also provide high-quality and cost-effective cables such as MTP trunk cables, QSFP+ breakout cable, LC to MTP jumpers, etc.

High Speed Ethernet Cabling

There is a variety of types of cables and transceiver modules available for making Ethernet connections at speeds of 1Gigabit per second and above. This article will introduce the widely used optical transceivers and cables for 1-Gigabit, 10-Gigabit and 40-Gigabit connections.

1-Gigabit Connections

• Transceivers
  Optical fiber connections are constructed with a combination of a transceiver (sometimes called a GBIC – for GigaBit Interface Converter). The transceiver accepts digital signals from the Ethernet device (switch or adapter card) and converts them to optical signals for transmission over the fiber. Although a number of different form factors for this GBIC have been defined by standards bodies, the most common is the SFP (Small Form Factor Pluggable Transceiver). The term GBIC initially was used for a specific form factor, but with the widespread adoption of the smaller SFP standard form factor, the term GBIC has fallen into the vernacular as a general term for an optical transceiver.
• Cables
  The most commonly used cable for 1Gbps Ethernet is the Category 5 (Cat5) cable with an RJ45 connector on either end. This cable can handle connections of up to about 100 M in length. For longer connections an optical fiber cable can be used.

10-Gigabit Connections

For 10-Gigabit Ethernet cabling the fiber options are very similar. The transceivers are somewhat different, as is some nomenclature. New possibilities have evolved for copper connections.

• Transceivers
  Standards bodies initially offered several options for the 10-Gigabit transceiver. The one that ultimately evolved as most popular in commercial data center usage was the XFP transceiver. XFP stands for 10–Gigabit Form Factor Pluggable. In recent years an extension of the SFP transceiver was standardized for use with 10 Gigabit Ethernet and named SFP+. SFP+ has the same mechanical characteristics as the the SFP transceiver – it just is capable of supporting the higher speed (some, but not all, SFP+ transceivers can actually operate at either 1Gbps or 10Gbps). The advantage of SFP+ was that it was smaller than the XFP form factor allowing for much more dense packaging of ports on switches.
• Fiber Cables
  10-Gigabit Ethernet fiber connections use the same optical fiber types as 1-Gigabit Ethernet. The range is less due to the higher speed and the names are similar:
  Short Range: SR -for connections of up to 300 M in length
  Long Range: LR –for connections of up to 2,000 M (2 KM) in length.
  A new option is also available, though rather rarely used:
  Extended Range: ER – for connections of up to 10,000 M (10 KM) in length.

40-Gigabit Connections

• Transceivers
  40 Gigabit optical transceivers mainly include CFP transceiver and QSFP transceiver. The most common types of QSFP/QSFP+ optical transceivers are QSFP-40G-PLR4, QSFP-40G-CSR4, 40GBASE-PLRL4, QSFP-40G-LR4, and QSFP-40G-SR4. For example, JuniperJNP-QSFP-40G-LR4compatible 40GBASE-LR4 QSFP + transceiver from Fiberstore provides 4 CWDM lanes in 1310nm and achieves a transmission distance of 10km over single mode fibers.  
• Cable Assemblies
  Cables used in 40 Gigabit Ethernet mainly include passive and active direct attach copper cables and active optical cable (AOC). The QSFP+ passive or active direct attach copper cables are designed with twinax copper cable and terminated with QSFP+ connectors. For instance, CiscoQSFP-4SFP10G-CU1Mcompatible QSFP+ to 4SFP+ passive copper cable is suitable for very short distances and offer a very cost-effective way to establish a 40-gigabit link between QSFP port and SFP+ port of Cisco switches within racks and across adjacent racks. The main difference between passive QSFP+ DAC and active QSFP+ DAC is that the passive one is without the active component. AOC is used for short-range multi-lane data communication and interconnect applications. It uses electrical-to-optical conversion on the cable ends to improve speed and distance performance of the cable without sacrificing compatibility with standard electrical interfaces.  

As the main fiber optical manufacturer and supplier in China, Fiberstore offers a full range of optical transceivers, such as SFP+ transceiver, X2 transceiver, XENPAK transceiver, XFP transceiver, SFP transceiver, GBIC transceiver, CWDM/DWDM transceiver, 40G QSFP+ & CFP, 3G-SDI video SFP, WDM Bi-Directional transceiver and PON transceiver. All our fiber transceivers are 100% compatible with major brands like Cisco, HP, Juniper, Nortel, Force10, D-link, 3Com.

Types of QSFP Transceivers

In order to meet the demand for increasing the transceiver port density for optical applications and find a cost effective way to increase date rate, multiple communications companies announced the release of a quad small form-factor pluggable (QSFP) optical module specification in its final form in December 4, 2006. The QSFP specification defines a highly integrated four-channel optical transceiver to provide increased port density and total system cost savings when replacing four standard SFP transceiver modules. The 40GBASE QSFP module has become a dominant 40G optical transceiver and offers customers a wide variety of high-density 40 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options for data center, high-performance computing networks, enterprise core and distribution layers, and service provider transport applications.

There are various kinds of QSFP transceivers for different distance requirements and fiber types. According to various criteria, QSFP transceivers can be divided into different types.

Transport Media

Copper, single mode fiber (SMF) and multimode fiber (MMF) are three kinds of transport media used in 40 Gigabit Ethernet. Different QSFP transceivers may adopt different transport media. According to IEEE Ethernet standard, the followings are commonly used 40 Gigabit Ethernet media system:

QSFP-40G-CR4—40 Gigabit Ethernet over four short-range twinaxial copper cables bundled as a single cable.

QSFP-40G-SR4—40 Gigabit Ethernet over four short-range multimode fiber optical cables.

QSFP-40G-LR4—40 Gigabit Ethernet over four wavelengths carried by a single long-distance single mode fiber optical cable.

Connector Type

Different QSFP transceivers may have different connector interfaces. Through various technologies, many kinds of connectors could be applied into 40 Gigabit Ethernet. And the commonly-used are Duplex LC, MPO and MPO/MTP. MPO and MTP are often used interchangeably. For example, Fiberstore QSFP-40G-SR4 and QSFP-40G-LR4 are transceivers with duplex LC connectors. While the Cisco QSFP-40G-CSR4 is with MPO/MTP connector.

Transmission Distance

According to transmission distance, QSFP transceivers can be divided into short-range QSFP transceiver and long-range QSFP transceiver. QSFP-40GBD-SR is among the various short-range QSFP transceivers. It supports link lengths of 100 meters and 150 meters over laser-optimized OM3 and OM4 multi-mode fibers respectively. As a long-range QSFP transceiver, QSFP-40G-ER4 has a transmission distance of 40 km.

Wavelength

In a QSFP transceiver, the wavelength of each channel can either be of the same or differs from each other. For instance, The wavelengths of Cisco QSFP-40G-SR4 and Cisco QSFP-40G-CSR4 transceivers are 4×850nm. While the four lanes of QSFP-40G-ER4 are 1271nm, 1291nm, 1311nm and 1331nm respectively.

The QSFP specification accommodates Ethernet, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand and SONET/SDH standards with different data rate options. The QSFP transceiver modules can be connected to both copper and optical cables. In the process of transmitting data,the QSFP transceiver converts parallel electrical input signals into parallel optical signals by a driven Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) array. All data signals are differential and the data rate can be up to 10 Gbps per channel. As the QSFP transceivers are used to interface networking hardware to a fiber optic cable, the choice of them depends on many factors, like the transport media, the connector type, transmission distance, wavelength, etc.

Things You Need to Know About Direct Attach Cables

A direct attach cable (DAC) is a fixed assembly that is purchased at a given length, with the connector modules permanently attached to each end of the cable. The direct attach cable is designed to use the same port as an optical transceiver, but compared with optical transceivers, the connector modules attached to the DAC leave out the expensive optical lasers and other electronic components, thus achieving significant cost savings and power savings in short reach applications.

Types of DAC

The direct attach cable can be divided into different types according to different criteria. According to the cables used, the direct attach cables include copper cable assemblies and fiber optic cable assemblies. Besides, DAC cable assemblies can also be classified into 10G SFP+ cables, 40G QSFP+ cables, and 120G CXP cables according to the data rate supported by different connector modules.

What’s more, we can also divide the DAC according to the number of connectors on the end of the cable. Most DAC assemblies have one connector on each end of the cable. But there is a special kind of DAC assembly which may have 3 or 4 connectors on one end of the cable. For instance, Cisco QSFP-4SFP10G-CU1M compatible QSFP+ to 4SFP+ passive breakout copper cable from Fiberstore has a single QSFP + module rated for 40-Gbps on one end and four SFP + modules, each rated for 10-Gbps, on the other end.

Direct Attach Copper Cable vs. Active Optical Cable

Direct attach copper cable is interchangeable and hot swappable with fiber optic modules. It supports such multiple protocols as Gigabit & 10G Ethernet, 8G FC, FCoE and InfiniBand, direct attach copper cable is a cost effective solution over optical transceivers. The defect of direct attach copper cable is that it is heavy and bulky, making it difficult to be managed. Furthermore, due to the nature of electrical signals, direct attach copper cable is vulnerable to the effects of electromagnetic interference (EMI), such as undesirable responses, degradation, or complete system failure.

Since the optical fiber is a kind of dielectric (not able to conduct electric current), AOC is also immune to EMI. Compared with direct attach copper cable, the drawback of AOC is that it may be a little expensive for customers. With the benefits of AOCs, such as lighter weight, high performance, low power consumption, low interconnection loss, EMI immunity, AOCs are now considered as the rising star of in telecommunications. For example, QSFP-4X10G-AOC10M from Fiberstore is suitable for very short distances and offers a very cost-effective way to establish a 40-gigabit link between QSFP ports of Cisco switches within racks and across adjacent racks.

Fiberstore DAC Solutions

Fiberstore offers a variety of high speed interconnect DAC assemblies including 10G SFP+ cables, 40G QSFP+ cables, and 120G CXP cables to satisfy the demands from 10G to 100G interconnection. All of the Fiberstore’s direct attach cables can meet the ever growing need to cost-effectively deliver more bandwidth, and they can also be customized to meet different requirements.