SFP vs. SFP+
Hello everyone!
Today’s article is dedicated to SFP and SFP+ modules. I will give a short explanation of both modules with the most important features and in addition, I will show the most important differences between them. I have already written about similar topics in several previous articles. But now I will show SFP and SFP+ in detail. Let’s get to know these transceivers!
SFP
SFP (Small Form Factor Pluggable) is a hot-swappable transceiver, which is based on IEEE802.3 and SFF-8472. A hot-swappable transceiver means that it is a transceiver that can be turned on or off during the operation of the device.
SFPs can be divided into several different types depending on the type of signal (electrical or optical), mode (SM or MM fiber), data transfer rate (FE, GE, 10 GE, etc.), encapsulation types (SFP, eSFP, SFP+, XFP, QSFP, OSFP, etc.), etc. There are a number of different standards that are supported by SFP. These are PON, Ethernet, SONET, Fiber Channel, etc.
A large number of devices today have slots for SFPs, such as routers, switches, servers, storages, OLTs, ONUs, and many others. In the next figure, we can see an example of SFP – Huawei GPON-OLT-CLASS C++.
SFP+
SFP+ is an abbreviation of Enhanced Small Form Factor Pluggable. It is a hot-swappable transceiver, which is an improved version of the SFP module. On May 9, 2006, the SFP+ specification was published. Three years later, SFP+ version 4.1 was released.
This transceiver supports different standards such as Fiber Channel, Ethernet, and Optical Transport Network standard OTU2.
This type of SFP module enables data transmission speeds of up to 16 Gbps. By using optical cables with SM optical fibers and WDM technology, it is possible to provide links up to 80 km. The next figure shows examples of SFP+ – SFP+ 10G WDM BIDI 1270/1330NM 20KM 2PCS LC.
In the next table, we can see the main and most important difference between SFP and SFP+.
This is the end of this article. I hope you learned something new!
