High-Density 40G to 10G Breakout Cabling Solutions

20 Mar 2018

As datacom technology migrates from 10G to 40G and beyond, it is often necessary to connect 40G equipment with existing 10G equipment. 40G to 10G breakout cabling solution is ideal for connecting high speed switches populated with higher rate transceivers QSFP+, CFP, CXP, CFP2, etc. to existing 10G elements populated with SFP+ modules. How to achieve 40G to 10G breakout cabling? This article will introduce two breakout solutions to you.

40G to 10G Breakout Cabling Solutions

40G parallel optics transceivers (40GBASE-SR4) can support 4x10G modes. This feature allows new parallel optics active equipment to be compatible with existing 10G transceivers. Parallel optics 40GBASE-SR4 uses 8 out of 12 MPO/MTP interface fibers transmitting 4 x duplex (DX) channels (4 x transmit and 4 x receive). On the side of 40G QSFP+, 12-fiber MTP cable is used to connect the QSFP and on the 10G side, 4 LC fiber patch cords are used to connect SFP+ modules. With certain optical equipment, higher-speed equipment (40G QSFP+) can be connected to slower-speed equipment (10G SFP+) successfully. For instance, 40G to 10G breakout cable and 40G QSFP+ breakout panel are two cost-saving, simple and high-density breakout cabling solutions making 40G to 10G breakout cabling more efficient to manage.

Solution 1–MTP to 4 LC Harness Cable for 40G to 10G Breakout Cabling

MTP to 4 LC harness cable is configured as an 8-fiber MTP connector on one side and 4 duplex LC connectors on the other side. So 8-fiebr MTP to 4 LC harness cable is commonly used to directly connect 40G to 10G device. As the following figure shows, the MTP to 4 LC harness cable achieves 40G to 10G breakout cabling by connecting single QSFP+ (40G transceiver with MTP interface) and 4 SFP+ (10G transceivers with LC Duplex Interface). Since no additional network equipment applied, MTP to 4 LC harness cable is a time-saving and money-saving solution for building complex 40G high density network in the data center.

Solution 2–40G QSFP+ Breakout Panel for 40G to 10G Breakout Cabling

As shown in the picture below, the high density 40G QSFP+ breakout panel has 48 duplex LC ports front and 12 MTP Elite rear ports. It is designed to connect 40G QSFP ports with MTP fiber cable to the back of the panel and then this breaks out as 48x10GE on the front with LC fiber cable. As mentioned above, every 40G QSFP+ transceiver is connected to 4 SFP+ transceiver via 4 duplex LC connectors. Therefore, to makes 40G to 10G breakout cabling more simple and stable, our 40G QSFP+ breakout panel logically groups the ports in 4 duplex LC ports as you can see in the following picture.

The high-density 40G QSFP+ breakout panel is mainly used in 40G interconnect network hardware. With 12 QSFP+ MTP Elite rear ports and 48 SFP+ duplex LC ports in front, 12x40G multimode QSFP+ MTP connections from the trunk cables easily break out as 48X10G LC connections. Therefore, it achieves 480G transmission in only one 1RU patch panel and since the panels can be located in the same rack as the switches or closer to the network elements, it eliminates additional connections and you can then get the fastest bandwidth and greater connectivity in the space. Most importantly, the 40G QSFP+ breakout panel simplifies your high performance cable routing in a finished, professional manner and provides increased cable capacity in less rack space. It’s really a high-density cable management solution!