Have you ever wondered why pluggable optics exist? Have you ever wondered what acronyms like QSFP, LR4, FEC, and PAM4 actually mean? In this first episode I start a conversation with my colleague Ray Nering. He explains to me how a lot of these came to be, starting from the days of 1Gb GBIC all the way up to today's 400Gb QSFP-DD.
This is the first part of a four-episode conversation with Ray. In this episode we start at the beginning, with GBIC and SFP. He also talks about why pluggables were needed when they started and a whole bunch more.
- Pat Chou (@patchou), Cisco Optics Product Manager
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Ray Nering is a colleague of mine in the Cisco Optics product management group and over the years has held senior management positions at other companies in the optics space, such as AT&T Microelectronics, Lucent, JDSU, Agere, Optium, and Lightwire.
Additional resources
Cisco Optics blogs: blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog (subscribe at feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverif…iscoOpticsBlog )
Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: cs.co/9008BlQen
Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics
Timestamps
3:48 How did pluggable optics start
6:34 The problem with early non-pluggables
8:56 Pay as you grow model
11:00 What is SERDES
12:48 What happens when your data center grows
