What is really a SFP transceiver?
SFP transceiver is a hot-pluggable fiber transceiver, of which the SFP stands for Small Form-factor Pluggable. The mechanical, electronic, and optical design and gratifaction derive from a Multi-source Agreement (MSA) within the fiber telecom industry. It is a pluggable form of SFF. SFP may be the interface between a network device mother board and a fiber optic or copper network cable.

Where is a SFP transceiver used?
SFP transceiver is able to support most of the fiber networking standards for example Gigabit Ethernet, Fiber Channel, SONET, along with a quantity of other communications standards. As a compact and hot-pluggable optical transceiver, it is utilized in optical communications for telecommunication and data communication applications. It connects a switch, router, or any other network devices to a fiber cabling plant. SFP transceivers can be found in Metro Access Network, Metro Core Network, Wide Area Networks (WANs), etc.

What types will the SFP transceiver have?
SFP transceiver has an immense variation available, each with different transmitters or receivers. This enables the user to configure and customize the transceiver to get the proper optical reach with either a multimode fiber (multi mode SFP) or single-mode fiber type.

The SFP module commonly is available in four categories which are SX (850nm), LX (1310nm), ZX (1550nm) and DWDM (DWDM wavelengths). All of them have an interface of a copper cable which permits a mother board to speak via UTP (unshielded twisted-pair) network cable. Click here for a good example of 1550 SFP 80km. There also exist a CWDM and single-mode bi-directional fiber optic cables which are 1310/1490nm upstream and downstream.

Tips: FYI, the industry has developed enhancements to the SFP MSA, known as SFP Plus (SFP+), that is designed for higher data rates, lower cost and better thermal performance. By using SFP+ transceivers, data rate at 10 Gbps could be achievable, including the 8 Gigabit Fiber Channel. When compared with XENPAK or XFP type of modules that have all of their circuitry inside, an SFP+ module leaves some of its circuitry to be implemented on the host board.

What benefits will the SFP transceiver have?
Firstly, SFP transceiver is pluggable that makes it easy to alter the optical interface in the last step of card manufacturing. It's also easy to accommodate different connector interfaces or a mix of SX and LX SFP.

Practically available, the SFP transceiver has the capability transfer rates as high as 4.25 Gbps. XFP, a form factor that is virtually identical to the SFP type, increases this amount by nearly three times, at 10 Gbps. The SFP transceiver is specified making compatible through the MSA between manufacturers, to ensure that different users who may use equipment from various manufacturers and providers can function effectively and smoothly without having to worry about errors and inconveniences.

Digital optical monitoring (DOM) or digital diagnostics monitoring (DDM) functions are based on the modern optical SFP transceiver according to the industry specifications of the SFF-8472 MSA. The consumer has the ability to constantly monitor real-time parameters of the SFP, for example optical input/outp power, supply voltage and laser bias current due to this feature.

A SFP cage is surface mounted to the PCB board to simply accept the transceiver. This not just provides easy replacement and reconfiguration, but additionally eliminates extra manufacturing steps and reduces cost. Because the optical component is taken away from soldering process, SFP transceivers have high optical reliability and permits the use of higher soldering temperatures.

SFP transceiver is a very popular format that's recommended by a large number of fiber optic component providers. These businesses carry SFP transceivers for those Cisco devices along with transceiver modules for many other manufacturers. So, if you want technology solutions for the networking applications, at this point you know what to consider. Here is a nice web store you can purchase Cisco SFP modules.