Data Center Enters a New Era of 40G/100G

The increasingly frequent expansion and upgrading of the data center require its basic cabling to be highly reliable, manageable, and flexible. Another element is scalability. It not only refers to the physical expansion of servers, switches, or storage devices but also requires the data center to evolve at a higher rate. With the technological progress and the formulation of 40G/100G Ethernet, fiber channel protocol (8G-16G-32G), Infiniband (25Gbps-10Gbps-40G/100Gbps), and other standards, the basic cabling must be suitable for various applications with the rapid growth of bandwidth in the future.

IEEE 802 3ba standard meets the high bandwidth requirements of more and more applications in data centers, operator networks, and other traffic-intensive and high-performance computing environments. The demand for virtualization in the data center and the multiplication of the number of virtual machines, the integration of Taiwan network services, video on demand, and social networks are also the driving force for the implementation of 40G/100G standards.

The 40G/100G Ethernet standard developed by the IEEE 802.3ba working group was officially approved in June 2010 to support 40G/100G Ethernet frame transmission per second. At the same time, the physical layer communication specification connected through backbone network, multimode fiber, single-mode fiber, and Twinax copper cable is established. The standard does not make recommendations for UTP / STP copper cables.

Standard Defined 40G/100G OM3/OM4 Optical Fiber

OM3/OM4 are two multimode optical fibers defined in the standard for 40G/100G transmission. The minimum effective mode bandwidth is 2000MHz·km and 4700mhz·km respectively. Different from IEEE 8023ae, the modulation performance of 850nm working wavelength VCSEL light source in IEEE 802.3ba standard is reduced. Therefore, the physical layer PMD (physical medium related sublayer) is defined to transmit signals in parallel. Single-mode fiber is transmitted by WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) on a pair of fibers.

Parallel 40G/100G Optics

IEEE 802.3ba standard requires multiplexing multiple channels in one 40G/100G channel to realize transmission. 40GBASE-SR4 and 100GBASE-SR10 divide the 40G/100G data stream into 4 pairs and 10 pairs of 10G code streams to the parallel channel respectively at the transmitting end. At the receiving end, the code stream of the parallel channel is reconstituted into 40G/100G data streams respectively.

40G Ethernet adopts 12 core optical fibers, each channel has 4-core transmitting optical fibers and 4-core receiving optical fibers, and the middle 4-core optical fibers are idle. 100G Ethernet adopts 24 core optical fiber, which is divided into two 12 core arrays, one for transmitting and the other for receiving. In each array, the middle 10 core optical fiber is used to transmit traffic, while the outer 2-core optical fiber is idle.

40G/100G Industry Development

The determination of 40G/100G high-speed Ethernet standard IEEE 802.3ba standard makes network equipment manufacturers begin to launch products in 40G and 100G, and operators also begin to evaluate the future development direction of the high-speed networks. The main difference between the 40G Ethernet layer and the 100G Ethernet layer is that most of the manufacturers are the first to support the 40G Ethernet interface, which is different from the 100G Ethernet layer.

From the perspective of the industry, 100G aims at WANs and MANs. 40G aims at IDC and LANs. Because it is closer to the current demand, 40G products will be promoted faster than 100G products. The new IT architecture, such as cloud computing, triple play, smart appliances, and 3G, makes users’ demand for network speed increase by orders of magnitude. In terms of home applications, the popularity of IPTV, smart appliances, 3D games, and video conferencing will easily make the demand for home broadband reach more than 100M. The demand for Ethernet bandwidth will certainly be higher and higher.

Conclusion

The increasing high-speed applications urgently need to improve the convergence ability of Ethernet links and promote the introduction of 40G/100G Ethernet standard The OM3/OM4 multimode optical fiber connection scheme based on MTP array connector technology provides a reliable physical transmission guarantee for high bandwidth link aggregation. We have reason to believe that the data center that has broken through the bandwidth bottleneck will stride into a new era of 40G/100G. Whether you are looking for high-quality 40G/100G optics, like 40G/100G fiber optic transceiver modules (40G QSFP+ SR4, 40G QSFP+ LR4, 40G QSFP+ ER4, 40G QSFP+ PSM4, etc.) or fiber optic cables, you will find them at QSFPTEK. You can also get 40G/100G upgrading solutions from the QSFPTEK professional tech team. Customer experience representatives and tech support are available round-the-clock to receive your orders and inquiries at [email protected].