Category Archives: Network Solutions

400G OSFP Transceiver Types Overview

400G

OSFP stands for Octal Small Form-factor Pluggable, which consists of 8 electrical lanes, running at 50Gb/s each, for a total of the bandwidth of 400Gb/s. This post will give an introduction of 400G OSFP transceiver types, the fiber connections, and some QAs about OSFP.

400G OSFP Transceiver Types

Below lists some current main 400G OSFP transceiver types: OSFP SR8, OSFP DR4, OSFP DR4+, OSFP FR4, OSFP 2*FR4, and OSFP LR4, which summarize OSFP transceiver according to the two transmission types (over multimode fiber and single-mode fiber) they support.

Fibers Connections for 400G OSFP Transceivers

400G OSFP SR8

Figure 1 OSFP SR8 to OSFP SR8.jpg
  • 400G OSFP SR8 to 2× 200G SR4 over MTP-16 to 2× MPO-8 breakout cable.
Figure 2 OSFP SR8 to 2 200G SR4.jpg
  • 400G OSFP SR8 to 8× 50G SFP via MTP-16 to 8× LC duplex breakout cable with up to 100m.
Figure 3 OSFP SR8 to 8 50G SFP.jpg

400G OSFP DR4

  • 400G OSFP DR4 to 400G OSFP DR4 over an MTP-12/MPO-12 cable.Figure 1 OSFP SR8 to OSFP SR8.jpg
  • 400G OSFP DR4 to 4× 100G DR4 over MTP-12/MPO-12 to 4× LC duplex breakout cable.
Figure 4 OSFP DR4 to 4 100G DR.jpg

400G OSFP XDR4/DR4+

  • 400G OSFP DR4+ to 400G OSFP DR4+ over an MTP-12/MPO-12 cable.
  • 400G OSFP DR4+ to 4× 100G DR over MTP-12/MPO-12 to 4× LC duplex breakout cable.
Figure 5 OSFP DR4+ to 4 100G DR.jpg

400G OSFP FR4

400G OSFP FR4 to 400G OSFP FR4 over duplex LC cable.

Figure 6 OSFP FR4 to OSFP FR4.jpg

400G OSFP 2FR4

OSFP 2FR4 can break out to 2× 200G and interop with 2× 200G-FR4 QSFP transceivers via 2× CS to 2× LC duplex cable.

400G OSFP Transceivers: Q&A

Q: What does “SR8”, “DR4”, “XDR4”, “FR4”, and “LR4” mean?

A: “SR” refers to short range, and “8” implies there are 8 optical channels. “DR” refers to 500m reach using single-mode fiber, and “4” implies there are 4 optical channels. “XDR4” is short for “eXtended reach DR4”. And “LR” refers to 10km reach using single-mode fiber.

Q: Can I plug an OSFP transceiver module into a QSFP-DD port?

A: No. QSFP-DD and OSFP are totally different form factors. For more information about QSFP-DD transceivers, you can refer to 400G QSFP-DD Transceiver Types Overview. You can use only one kind of form factor in the corresponding system. E.g., if you have an OSFP system, OSFP transceivers and cables must be used.

Q: Can I plug a 100G QSFP28 module into an OSFP port?

A: Yes. A QSFP28 module can be inserted into an OSFP port but with an adapter. When using a QSFP28 module in an OSFP port, the OSFP port must be configured for a data rate of 100G instead of 400G.

Q: What other breakout options are possible apart from using OSFP modules mentioned above?

A: OSFP 400G DACs & AOCs are possible for breakout 400G connections. See 400G Direct Attach Cables (DAC & AOC) Overview for more information about 400G DACs & AOCs.

Original Source: 400G OSFP Transceiver Types Overview

How to Fix Lan Card Problems?

Lan card, also called NIC card or network interface card, is a ‘door’ to connect computers or servers to the networks. Any type of server network activity cannot live without a Lan card. Especially nowadays, the Internet of things has been an overwhelming trend. Filled in our daily life, the NIC card has been widely applied in various devices, such as network switches, televisions, and even refrigerators. Along with its popularization, many problems may be encountered. In this article, some frequently asked questions will be gathered and solved to help you have a clearer mind about network card.

Are My Optical Transceivers and Cables Compatible with Lan Cards?

Before buying NIC cards, the first thing you need to do is to check the type and brand of your transceivers and the equipment like switch you want to connect with. By doing so, you will be clear about the brand, data rate, and port type of the network adapter you are going to buy. Then check the datasheet of the network adapter you want to buy to confirm the type of transceivers, cables, and networking operation systems can be supported by this card.

Lan Card Specification Sample From FS

Figure 1: Lan Card Specification Sample From FS

For example, if you want to connect an FS 10Gb network card with FS S5800-8TF12S 10Gb switch, a 10G SFP+ DAC can be used. Since the network adapter and switch are backward compatible, the data rate of supported DAC should no higher than connected two devices on each end. By the way, if the port of the device is copper port, network cables combined with copper transceivers should be deployed instead of DAC. As for the brand, it will be safe to use the whole set of the device from the same brand in case of any unexpected problem.

FS 10G Lan Card with DAC Cable

Figure 2: FS 10G Lan Card with DAC Cable

How to Check My Lan Card Working Status?

Sometimes, the network cannot be connected. After checking cable connections and reboot the equipment, the Internet is still inaccessible. We may wonder if there is something wrong with the Lan card.

At that moment, it’s time to check your network card driver. You can follow the following steps:

1. Press Win+R on your keyboard to quickly summon the RUN box.

2. Input “devmgmt.msc” in the box and click OK button to open Device Manager.

3. Click Network Adapters in Device Manager to expand this section. After that, double-click your network adapter entry. Then, you can see the network card status on the General tab. If “This device is working properly” is showed on that page, it proves that the network card is still working; if not, there might be some specific problems with your card.

How to Check Lan Card Status

Figure 3: How to Check Lan Card Status

If Lan Card Is Bad, What Should I Do?

After checking the Lan card status as the way we mentioned in the previous question, you find the card is not working and there is a specific problem has been listed. The top priority to solve that is to follow the suggestions given in the Properties dialog box. If these suggestions are not helpful, you can choose to update or re-install the driver. Just remember to uninstall the driver first before re-installing. If your network is still unable to connect, you can try to remove the old expansion card and install a new one.

Summary

Lan card has almost been penetrated every corner of our daily life. It’s necessary for us to get some basic knowledge about it to know how to solve some simple problems when we are in trouble. In this post, three frequently asked questions have been shared to give you some inspirations.

Cat6 Cables for Data Center Applications

The trend in network has always been leaning towards the higher bandwidth. Upgrading to a Cat6 cables (including Cat6a) system can ensure transmission speed and sustained performance for processing needs. Especially for data centers, investing into a higher-grade system will increase the network’s capacity and performance.

Cat6 Cables Overview

Conformed with EIA/TIA/IEEE standards, Cat6 cabling system includes patch cables, pre-terminated trunk cables, and bulk cables. For most first-class suppliers, their Cat6 Ethernet cables, involving Cat6a ethernet cables have 100% passed the Fluke Test, and deliver a specified testing report. Generally, Cat6 network cables adopt oxygen-free copper conductor with high electrical conductivity and low signal transmission attenuation. Being backward compatible with all the previous categories, cable UTP Cat6 and cable SFTP Cat6 both can be used to support up to 10 Gigabit Ethernet speed, and operate at up to 250MHz (Cat6a at 500MHz).

Cat6 Patch Cables

 

Cat6 Ethernet patch cables consist of Cat6, Cat6a, and slim Cat6 patch cables. According to length like 100ft Cat6 Ethernet cable, color, cable jacket, and shielding type, different Cat6 can be found in the market. Usually, the conductor of Cat6a and Cat6 shielded cable is 26AWG. The Cat6 unshielded cable is 24AWG, and the slim Cat6 is 28AWG. With a transmission distance up to 100m, Cat6 patch cables are widely used in data centers, network cabinets, offices to connect any data transmission equipment, such as PoE switches.

Cat6 Patch Cables

Figure 1: Cat6 Patch Cables

Cat6 Pre-terminated Trunk Cables

 

For Pre-terminated trunk cable, UTP Cat6 and SFTP Cat6a are available. Altogether, there are plug to plug type and jack to jack type can be found in the market. Generally, the conductor of jack to jack type is 23 AWG, while the plug to plug type is 26AWG. When it comes to the Cat6 cable price per meter, the plug to plug Cat6 cable price and Cat6a cable price are much higher than jack to jack types like jack to jack Cat6 UTP price. As for applications, Cat6 pre-terminated trunk cable assemblies are used to improve efficiency and reduce labor cost and waste in large infrastructures with high-density cross-connection and patching systems.

Cat6 Pre-terminated Trunk Cables

Figure 2: Cat6 Pre-terminated Trunk Cables

Cat6 Bulk Cables

 

Complied with IEEE 802.3af and IEEE 802.3at for PoE applications, most Cat6 bulk cables (including Cat6a) are about 1000ft (305m) lengths with spools. Their conductors are about 23 AWG. This Cat6 cable type is premium cabling designed for Cat6 or Cat6a applications, such as connecting an Ethernet wall jack to a router, patch panel or switch. With fast transmission and excellent signal quality, it ensures peak performance through your LAN.

Cat6 Bulk Cable

Figure 3: Cat6 Bulk Cable

Cat6 Cabling Application in Data Center

As we mentioned in the previous part, Cat6 cables consist of patch cables, pre-terminated trunk cables, and bulk cables. Each Cat6 cable type has its own features, which can be deployed into different scenarios. Here, we will take the integrated cabling of Cat6 pre-terminated trunk cable and Cat6 Ethernet patch cable types as a case to demonstrate its application in data center.

Cat6 Cabling Solution Case:

 

Cat6 Cables Data Center Application

Figure 4: Cat6 Cables Data Center Application

As the Cat6 wiring diagram shown above, we can find in this scenario, there are two racks in this data center needed to do cabling. And in each side, there is one FS S3900-24T4S switch. In that case, the first thing you need to do is to consider how to do Cat6 wiring and what’s the Cat6 wire order. Firstly, for the switch connection, the regular Cat6 patch cables will be used undoubtedly. As for connecting the two racks, the jack to jack trunk cable is suggested to use to do cross-connection. After that, cable managers and cable ties are recommended to deploy to keep the cables organized effectively. For suggested products list, you can refer to the following chart.

Suggested Products:

 

 Products List

Figure 5: Products List

Conclusion

As a cost-effective solution, Cat6 cables have been widely applied in all kinds of 1G/10G networks, especially in data centers. How to have a flexible and economically cabling system matters a lot to data center users. Hope this article can give you some inspirations.

DWDM Network over Long Distance Transmission

With the ever-increasing need for higher bandwidth, DWDM technology has been one of the most favorable optical transport network (OTN) applications. In this post, we will reveal FS.COM DWDM-based network solutions over various transmitting distances as well as some suggestions for the DWDM networks deployment.

DWDM Networks Basics

As usual, let’s review some basics of DWDM networks. In this part, we will figure out two questions: What is DWDM? What are the components of DWDM networks?

DWDM Technology
DWDM Networks

Figure 1: DWDM Networks

DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) is an associate extension of optical networking. It can put data signals from different sources together on a single optical fiber pair, with each signal simultaneously carried on its own separate light wavelength. With DWDM, up to 160 wavelengths with a spacing of 0.8/0.4 nm (100 GHz/50 GHz grid) separate wavelengths or channels of data can be transmitted over a single optical fiber.

DWDM Networks Components

Conventionally, for DWDM networks, there are four devices showed as below that are commonly used by IT workers:

  • Optical transmitters/receivers
  • DWDM mux/demux filters
  • Optical add/drop multiplexers (OADMs)
  • Optical amplifiers transponders (wavelength converters)

DWDM Networks Over Long Distance Transmission Solutions

Scenario 1: 40 km Transmission
40km DWDM Network

Figure 2: 40km DWDM Network

For this case, the 80km DWDM SFP+ modules and 40ch DWDM Mux/Demuxs are recommended to use. Since the 80km DWDM SFP+ modules are able to support 10G transmission over 40 km, no additional device is needed under this scenario.

Scenario 2: 80 km Transmission
80km DWDM Network

Figure 3: 80km DWDM Network

Deploying this 80 km DWDM network, we will still use 80km DWDM SFP+ modules and 40ch DWDM Mux/Demuxs. The light source of 80km DWDM SFP+ modules might not be able to support such long transmission distance, as there might be a light loss during transmission. In this case, pre-amplifier (PA) is usually deployed before the location A and location B to improve the receiver sensitivity and extend signal transmission DWDM distance. Meanwhile, the dispersion compensation module (DCM) can be added to this link to handle the accumulated chromatic dispersion without dropping and regenerating the wavelengths on the link. The above diagram shows the deploying method of this 80km DWDM network.

Scenario 3: 100 km Transmission
100km DWDM Network

Figure 4: 100km DWDM Network

Under this scenario, the devices used in scenario 2 still need to remain. Since the transmission distance has been increased, the light power will be decreased accordingly. Besides that, you will also need to use booster EDFA (BA) to amplify the optical signal transmission of the 80km DWDM SFP+ modules.

By the way, if you want to extend DWDM transmission distance, you can read this post for solutions: Extend DWDM Network Transmission Distance With Multi-Service Transport Platform.

Factors to Consider in Deploying DWDM Networks

1. Being compatible with existing fiber plant. Some types of older fiber are not suitable for DWDM use. Currently, standard singlemode fiber (G. 652) accounts for the majority of installed fiber, supporting DWDM in the metropolitan area.

2. Having an overall migration and provisioning strategy. Because DWDM is capable of supporting massive growth in bandwidth demands over time without forklift upgrades, it represents a long-term investment. Your deployment should allow for flexible additions of nodes, such as OADMs, to meet the changing demands of customers and usages.

3. Network management tools. A comprehensive network management tool will be needed for provisioning, performance, monitoring, fault identification and isolation, and remedial action. Such a tool should be standards-based (SNMP, for example) and be able to interoperate with the existing operating system. For example, the FMT DWDM solutions from FS.COM are able to support kinds of network management, including NMU line-card, monitor online, simple management tool, and SNMP.

4. Interoperability issues. Because DWDM uses specific wavelengths for transmission, the DWDM wavelengths used must be the same on either end of any given connection. Moreover, other interoperability issues also need to be considered, including power levels, inter- and intra-channel isolation, PMD (polarization mode dispersion) tolerances, and fiber types. All these contribute to the challenges of transmission between different systems at Layer 1.

5. Strategy for protection and restoration. There might have hard failures (equipment failures, such as laser or photodetector, and fiber breaks) and soft failures such as signal degradation (for example, unacceptable BER). Therefore, you need to have a protection strategy while deploying a DWDM network.

6. Optical power budget or link loss budget. Since there might be an optical signal loss over the long distance transmission, it’s critical to have a link loss budget in advance.

Summary

Bringing great scalability and flexibility to fiber networks, the DWDM networks solutions obviously enjoys plenty of strengths, which is also proved to be future-proof. In this post, we make a revelation of the DWDM-based network over long distance transmission. Also, some tips for deploying a DWDM network has also been shared for your reference.

An Overview on EVPN and LNV

Bombarded with assorted network applications and protocols, the technologies and solutions for network virtualization delivery have been enriched greatly over past years. Among those technologies, VXLAN, also called virtual extensible local area network, is the key network virtualization. It enables layer 2 segments to be extended over an IP core (the underlay). The initial definition of VXLAN (RFC 7348) only relied on a flood-and-learn approach for MAC address learning. Now, a controller or a technology such as EVPN and LNV in Cumulus Linux can be realized. In this post, we are going to make an exploration on those two techniques: LNV and EVPN.

VXLAN

Figure 1: VXLAN

What Is EVPN

EVPN is also named as Ethernet VPN. It is largely considered as a unified control plane solution for the controller-less VXLAN, allowing for building and deploying VXLANs at scale. The EVPN relies on multi-protocol BGP (MP-BGP) to transport both layer 2 MAC and layer 3 IP information at the same time. It enables a separation between the data layer and control plane layer. By having the combined set of MAC and IP information available for forwarding decisions, optimized routing and switching within a network becomes feasible and the need for flooding to do learning gets minimized or even eliminated.

What Is LNV

LNV is the short of lightweight network virtualization. It is a technique for deploying VXLANs without a central controller on bare metal switches. Typically, it’s able to run the VXLAN service and registration daemons on Cumulus Linux itself. The data path between bridge entities is established on the top of a layer 3 fabric by means of a simple service node coupled with traditional MAC address learning.

The Relationship Between EVPN and LNV

From the above wiki of the EVPN and LNV, it’s easy for us to notice these two technologies are both the applications of VXLAN. For LNV, it can be used to deploy VXLAN without an external controller or software suite on the bare-metal layer 2/3 switches running Cumulus Linux network operating system (NOS). As for EVPN, it is a standards-based control plane for VXLAN, which can be used in any usual bare-metal devices, such as network switch and router. Typically, you cannot apply LNV and EVPN at the same time.

Apart from that, the deployments for EVPN and LNV are also different. Here, we make a configuring model for each of them for your better visualization.

EVPN Configuration Case

 

EVPN

Figure 2: EVPN

In the EVPN-VXLAN network segments shown in Figure 2 (Before), hosts A and B need to exchange traffic. When host A sends a packet to host B or vice versa, the packet must traverse the switch A, a VXLAN tunnel, and the switch B. By default, routing traffic between a VXLAN and a Layer 3 logical interface is disabled. If the functionality is disabled, the pure Layer 3 logical interface on the switch A drops Layer 3 traffic from host A and VXLAN-encapsulated traffic from the switch B. To prevent the pure Layer 3 logical interface on the switch A from dropping this traffic, you can reconfigure the pure Layer 3 logical interface as a Layer 2 logical interface, like Figure 2 (After). After that, you need to associate this interface with a dummy VLAN and a dummy VXLAN network identifier (VNI). Then, an Integrated routing and bridging (IRB) interface need to be created, which provides Layer 3 functionality within the dummy VLAN.

LNV Configuration Case

 

LNV

Figure 3: LNV

The two layer 3 switches are regarded as leaf 1 and leaf 2 in the above figure. They are running with Cumulus Linux and have been configured as bridges. Containing physical switch port interfaces, the two bridges connect to the servers as well as the logical VXLAN interface associated with the bridge. After creating a logical VXLAN interface on both leaf switches, the switches become VTEPs (virtual tunnel end points). The IP address associated with this VTEP is most commonly configured as its loopback address. In the image above, the loopback address is 10.2.1.1 for leaf 1 and 10.2.1.2 for leaf 2.

Summary

In this post, we have introduced the two techniques of network virtualization: EVPN and LNV. These two applications of network virtualization delivery share some similarities, but also quite a lot of differences. Being satisfied with the simplicity, agility, and scalability over the network, the EVPN has been a popular choice in the market.