It is unsurprising that due to the high levels of popularity of their routers and switches, that Cisco’s GBIC transceivers and SFP (Small Form Factor Pluggable) transceivers have also become exceedingly popular. It’s easy to see why these transceivers have become so popular- they are convenient and cost effective means for adopting both GigaBit Ethernet and Fibre Channel connections in a myriad of industries and sectors.ethernet optical transceiver module
Of all of their SFP transceivers, the 1000BASE-SX SFPs, GLC-SX-MM or GLC-SX-MMD, have perhaps become the most popular. Due to their merits, this is unsurprising:
Compatible with the IEEE 802.3z 1000BASE-SX standard,
These transceivers can operate on legacy 50 μm multimode fibre links up
to 550 m and on 62.5 μm Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI)-grade
multimode fibres up to 220 m.
These Cisco SFPs support up to 1km over laser-optimized 50 μm multimode fibre cable.
But due to their similar coding structures, much confusion arises about
the specific differences between these components. The confusion can
mainly be attributed to the “D”. In this instance, the D represents DOM
(Digital Optical Monitoring), this is an industry wide standard that has
been established to define a digital interface to access real-time
parameters. These parameters include:
Optical Tx power.
Optical Rx power.
Laser bias current.
Temperature
Transceiver supply voltage.
This means that with the GLC-SC-MMD you are able to monitor the fibre
optic connections within a network, both on a global level, or by
specific ports. Activating this feature enables for the temperature and
the signal power level of optical transceivers in specific ports to be
monitored. In addition both Console messages and syslog messages will be
sent if the optical operation conditions fall beneath or rise above the
manufacturers recommended thresholds.
Whilst this blog discussed both the GLC-SX-MM and GLC-SX-MMD Cisco transceivers, it is important to establish that the company has discontinued the production of new GLC-SX-MM transceivers. However, despite this, for price based considerations, many SFP purchasers prefer to utilise the older GLC-SX-MM transceiver as it is substantially cheaper than the GLC-SX-MMD transceiver.
Compatible SFP offer cost effective solutions to branded SFP transceivers. Our product ranges offers substantial savings on these products, whilst offering the same high levels of performance, reliability and security as their branded counterparts, demonstrated through our lifetime warranty.
