In today’s ever dynamic IT environment filled with ever increasing demand for more, we see high performance setups on 40G and 100G speeds being proposed in Data Centers and new establishments. However, still we have majority of organizations happily performing Business on 10G or 1G infrastructure. Hence, its worthwhile to discuss and examine 2 mainstays transceivers of 10G technology i.e. XFP and SFP+ both being the preferred terminologies used in 10G data transmission.
Both XFP and SFP+ are 10G fiber optical modules and can connect with other type of 10G modules.XFP modules are hot-swappable and protocol-independent. They typically operate at near-infrared wavelengths (colors) of 850 nm, 1310 nm or 1550 nm.The enhanced small form-factor pluggable (SFP+) is an enhanced version of the SFP that supports data rates of 10 Gbit/s.
Below table illustrates difference between both XFP and SFP+ and how one type scores over other in Networking technology –
