Industrial SFP’s-Small Form Factor Pluggables

Industrial SFP’s-Small Form Factor Pluggables with (Dynamic Management Interface)

(SFP) stands for Small Form Factor Pluggables –  and is a compact, hot-pluggable transceiver used for both telecommunication and data communications applications.

The form factor and electrical interface are specified by a multi-source agreement (MSA) under the auspices of the S.F.P Committee.
Small Form Factor Pluggable interfaces network devices, for example switches, routers, media converters or similar device to a fibre optic or copper networking cable.

It is a popular industry format jointly developed and supported by many network component vendors.

The SFP transceivers are designed to support SONET, Gigabit Ethernet, 10Gbps Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and other communications standards. The word ‘Industrial’ indicates extended temperature operation, typically from -40⁰C to +85⁰C.

SFP’s are available with a variety of receiver and transmitter specifications. This allows users to select the relevant transceiver for each link to provide the required optical range over the available  fiber type (e.g. multi-mode fibre or single-mode fibre).

Transceivers are also designated by their transmission speed.  SFP modules are generally available in several different categories.

1 Gbit/s multi-mode fiber, LC connector, with black or beige extraction lever

• SX – 850 nm, for a maximum of 0.5km at 1.25 Gbit/s (Gigabit Ethernet). Other multi-mode SFP applications support even higher rates at shorter distances.

1.25 Gbit/s multi-mode fibre, LC connector, extraction lever colours not standardised

• SX+/MX/LSX (name dependent on manufacturer) – 1310 nm, for a distance up to 2 km. Not compatible with SX or 100BASE-FX. Based on LX but engineered to work with a multi-mode fiber using a standard multi-mode patch cable rather than a mode-conditioning cable commonly used to adapt LX to multi-mode.

1 to 2.5 Gbit/s single-mode fiber, LC connector, with blue extraction lever

• LX – 1310 nm, for distances up to 10 km (originally, LX just covered 5 km and LX10 for 10 km followed later)
• EX – 1310 nm, for distances up to 40 km
• ZX – 1550 nm, for distances up to 80 km (depending on fiber path loss), with green extraction lever (see GLC-ZX-SM1)
• EZX – 1550 nm, for distances up to 160 km (depending on fiber path loss)
• BX (officially BX10) – 1490 nm/1310 nm, Single Fibre Bi-Directional Gigabit SFP Transceivers. These are paired as BX-U (for Uplink) and BX-D  (for Downlink) respectively, also for distances up to 10 km. Variations of bidirectional SFPs are also manufactured which use 1550 nm in one direction, and higher transmit power versions with link distances up to 80 km.
• 1550 nm  XD 40 km , ZX 80 km ,  EX or EZX 120 km
• SFSW – Single Fibre Single Wavelength transceivers, for bi-directional traffic on a single fiber. Coupled with CWDM, these double the traffic density of fibre links

What is IEEE 802.3z?

IEEE Std 802.3z, extends the operating speed of  local area networks to 1 billion bits per second (1000 Mb/s (1 Gbps)) for interconnecting high-performance switches, routers, and servers in the backbone of local area networks. Maintaining backward compatibility with the over-100-million-node installed base of 10 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s. A Key requirement of the standard was to be backwards compatible and to interwork with 10Mbps and 100Mbps.

What is DMI?

DMI Stands for Dynamic Management Interface. It is a method of monitoring the fibre optic interface attached to the SFP’s.
The Dynamic Management Interface  monitors transmit and receive levels, temperature and voltages and other critical parameters. More Information.

Gigabit SFP Fibre driver Models

SFP Pin Orientation

SFP Pin Assignments

SFP Diagrams