Tag Archives: 100G QSFP28

100G Switch Price and Configuration

There is no doubt that the time of 100G is coming. Except the professional companies like Cisco, Juniper network and Dell, large company like Facebook and Linkedin have also designed their own “super power” 100G switches. And there are many vendors provide white box switches wanting to share the cake of 100G switch market. This post offers a simple analysis of the 100G switch price and configuration on that provided by the market.

100G QSFP28 Port Is Popular for 100G Switch

100G switch price varies mainly according to different brand and capacities. If you are selecting a 100G switch, it will be easy to figure out that most 100G switches are designed with 100G QSFP28 port. For example, some popular 100G switch like Cisco Nexus 3232C, Arista 7060CX-32 and Juniper QFX10002 are all equipped with 100G QSFP28 ports. This is because 100G QSFP28 modules have higher density and low power consumptions compared with other 100G QSFP28 modules. And QSFP28 modules can fit a variety of cabling systems.

Configuration and Price of 100G Switch

The port type on the switch usually determines its function in network. Here introduces several popular 1U 100G switch for your reference.

Cisco Nexus 3232C Switch

Cisco Nexus 3232C switch is a 1U 100G switch with 32 QSFP28 ports supporting a maximum of 128 x 25G ports. Another great feature of this switch is each QSFP28 port on Cisco Nexus 3232C can be operated at 10, 25, 40, and 100 Gbps. The QSFP28 fiber optic transceiver, AOC and DAC can work on these QSFP28 port.

cisco-nuxes-32332c
Arista 7060CX-32 Switch

Another switch provide by Arista has the capacities at the same level as Cisco Nexus 3232C switch is Arista 7060CX-32 switch. Each 100G port on Arista 7060CX-32 can also support transmission data rate of 10, 25, 40, and 100G. This switch also has another two SFP+ ports.

Arista 100g switch
100G White Box Switch

The 100G switch prices of big vendors are usually very expensive. The price of the above mentioned two 1U switches are around $ 30,000 which is not affordable for many enterprises. That’s why 100G white box switch is becoming gradually popular. Unlike Cisco switch, the software of white box switch is separated from the switch. The price of 100G white box switch is much lower than the brand ones. They can be customized to meet specific requirements for networking and business. The following is a 100G white box (S5850-48S2Q4C) which has 48 SFP+ ports, 2 QSFP+ ports and 4 QSFP28 ports, which is provided FS.COM.

100G switch

The price of the 100G switch is around $5,700, which is much lower compared with Cisco switch at the same capacity level. Compatible 10G, 40G and 100G modules are also available in FS.COM. Also, there are cost-effective 100G switches N5860-48SC with software installed that has a price of US$ 3,500.

100G QSFP28 switch

Compatible 100G QSFP28 Modules

If you are selecting a 100G QSFP28 switch, you will need 100G QSFP28 modules. To accomplish the 100G connections via QSFP28 port, there is a wide range of selections. For longer transmission distance, single-mode 100G QSFP28 modules are suggested. For short distance applications, 100G QSFP28 multimode module, AOC and DAC are suggested. The following table shows the generic 100G QSFP28 modules (compatible with FS.COM 100G switch) and the Cisco compatible 100G QSFP28 modules for your reference.

Generic 100G QSFP28 Cisco Compatible 100G QSFP28
QSFP28 100GBASE-SR4 QSFP-100G-SR4-S
QSFP28 100GBASE-PSM4 QSFP-100G-PSM4-S
QSFP28 100GBASE-CWDM4 Lite QSFP-100G-CWDM4-S
QSFP28 100GBASE-LR4 QSFP-100G-LR4-S

100G QSFP28 Fiber Optic Modules and Standards

The developing of 100G fiber optic transceiver has experienced a lot of challenges, thus various types of 100G fiber optic transceivers are being invented. Many 100G modules appeared on the market for a while and disappeared soon. Now it seems that 100G QSFP28 module will win the competition. It has the same cabling structure as 40G QSFP+ module and high density feature, which allows network upgrade to 100G with lower cost and less time. This post will introduce several commonly used 100G QSFP28 modules and standards.

100G QSFP28

QSFP28 module uses four lanes for 100G optical signal transmitting like 40G QSFP+. However, each lane of QSFP28 can transmit 25G optical signal. To fit the various requirements in practical applications, IEEE and MSA standards that support different transmission distances and fiber types are being published.

100G QSFP28 SR4 

100G QSFP28 SR4 is a standard published by IEEE. 100G QSFP28 SR4 module uses eight multimode fibers for 100G dual-way transmission over 850nm. It can support a transmission distance up to 70m over OM3 and 100m OM4 with a MTP interface. 12-fiber MTP OM3/OM4 trunk cables are suggested to be used with QSFP-100G-SR4 modules. 100Gbase-SR4 QSFP28 is the most popular QSFP28 module according to research.

100G QSFP28 LR4

100G QSFp28 LR4 is another 100G standards published by IEEE. It focuses on longer transmission distance over single-mode fiber. 100G QSFP28 LR4 has a duplex LC interface and uses WDM technologies to achieve 100G dual-way transmission over four different wavelengths around 1310nm. It can support distances up to 10km.

Although IEEE has defined two 100G standards separately for short and long distances, the requirements of various applications cannot be fully satisfied. For instances, the 100G-QSFP-LR4 module can support 10km, which is too much for a lot of single-mode applications. It would be uneconomical to buy a 10km module for just 1km or 2km application. MSA has published two 100G standards — 100Gbase-PSM4 and 100Gbase-CWDM4, which can help to decrease the cost of 100G deployment.

100G QSFP28 PSM4

100G QSFP28 PSM4  module has a MTP interface working on wavelength of 1310nm for 100G transmission over single-mode fibers. It can support transmission distance up to 500 meters. 100G QSFP28 PSM4 module is much cheaper than 100Gbase-LR4 QSFP28 module. And 500 meter’s transmission distance can cover a wide range of applications.

100G QSFP28 CWDM4

For longer transmission distance, 100G QSFP28 CWDM4 is suggested, which supports a distance up to 2km over single-mode fiber optic cable. 100Gbase-CWDM4 standard is published by MSA, which is a more cost-effective solution for a wide range of applications compared with 100Gbase-LR4. This module uses CWDM technologies to transmit the 100G optical signal via a duplex LC interface over wavelengths near 1310nm.

100G QSFP28 DAC

100G QSFP28 family also includes a series of direct attach cables. There are mainly two types of QSFP28 DAC, which are QSFP28 to QSFP28 DAC and QSFP28 to SFP28 DAC. These QSFP28 DACs are cost-effective solution for 100G transmission less than 5 meters.

100G QSFP28 Module Interface Fiber Type Distance Standards
100Gbase-SR4 QSFP28 MTP Multimode 70m (OM3); 100m (OM4) IEEE
100Gbase-LR4 QSFP28 LC Duplex Single-mode 10km IEEE
100Gbase-PSM4 QSFP28 MTP Single-mode 500km MSA
100Gbase-CWDM4 QSFP28 LC Duplex Single-mode 2km MSA
Conclusion

There are many ways to transmit to 100G network. 100G QSFP28 modules are the suggested methods. Both IEEE and MSA published standards for 100G QSFP28. For short distance transmission over multimode, 100Gbase-SR4 QSFP28 module is suggested. For single-mode applications, 100Gbase-PSM4 supporting 500m, 100Gbase-CWDM4 supporting 2km and 100Gbase-LR4 supporting 10km are available. The above table shows the basic information of these modules for your reference.