Lafite's Blog

Here’s a frequently asked question to address questions that have arisen from the significant uptick in the use of 25G transceivers, which is driven by high bandwidth demands in the enterprise, data center and service provider applications. 1. Why is the use of 25G increasing? Many network operators have chosen 25G instead of multiple 10G’s because 25G provides 2.5x bandwidth of the 10G in the same familiar SFP form factor at approximately the same power. This has enabled network equipment manufacturers to provide higher bandwidth connectivity. Rack-mountable switches and routers populated with 12 ports, 24 ports, and 48 ports on a single 1 RU faceplate are common for SFP. 2. What is the cost per bit of 25G? 25G provides 2.5x the bandwidth of 10G at a slight increase in cost. The result is nearly a 50% reduction in the cost per bit. 3. Is 25G standardized? The  IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers)  has standardized 25G. See IEEE802.3b...

An Overview of WDM WDM stands for Wavelength Division Multiplexing. WDM is the most important and most popular method to increase the capacity of a single strand of fiber.   Traditionally, only one colored light was used on a single strand of fiber to carry the information, such as 1550nm light. However, starting from the early 1990s, the Internet boom pushed service providers to find a method to increase the capacity on their network in the most economical way. That is when WDM devices were invented. In a WDM system, many different colored lights are combined by a WDM multiplexing device and put into a single strand of fiber, each color is called a channel. On the receiver side, each color is separated into its own channel by a WDM de-multiplexing device. It shows that a single fiber's capacity is increased by 40 times with a 40 channel WDM. The beauty of WDM is that you only need to upgrade the end equipment, no need to dig up trenches to bury more fibers, which is mu...