What is SFP?
The small form-factor pluggable (SFP) or Mini-GBIC is a compact, hot-pluggable transceiver used for both telecommunication and data communications applications. It interfaces a network device mother board (for a switch, router, fiber media converter or similar device) to a fiber optic or copper networking cable. It is a popular industry format jointly developed and supported by many network component vendors. SFP transceivers are designed to support SONET, Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and other communications standards.
SFP Types
SFP transceivers are available with a variety of transmitter and receiver types, allowing users to select the appropriate transceiver for each link to provide the required optical reach over the available optical fiber type (e.g. multi-mode fiber or single-mode fiber). Optical SFP modules are commonly available in several different categories:
- for multi-mode fiber, with black or beige extraction lever
- SX - 850 nm, for a maximum of 550 m at 1.25 Gb/s (Gigabit Ethernet) or 150m at 4.25 Gb/s (Fibre Channel)
- for single-mode fiber, with blue extraction lever
- LX - 1310 nm, for distances up to 10 km
- BX - 1490 nm/1310 nm, Single Fiber Bi-Directional Gigabit SFP Transceivers, paired as BS-U and BS-D for Uplink and Downlink respectively, also for distances up to 10 km
- 1550 nm 40 km (XD), 80 km (ZX), 120 km (EX or EZX)
- CWDM and DWDM transceivers at various wavelengths achieving various maximum distances
- for copper twisted pair cabling
- 1000base-T - these modules incorporate significant interface circuitry and can only be used for Gigabit Ethernet, as that is the interface they implement. They are not compatible with (or rather: do not have equivalents for) Fibre channel or SONET.