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Base-8 MPO

2023-05-11 11:35:18

These new 40Gb/s transceivers, called QSFP+ (Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable), had an MPO as the connector interface, utilizing a standard MPO 12 fiber connector but leaving the four middle connectors dark. This presented challenges both for customers who had installed structured cabling systems based on Duplex LC systems and also those who had installed MPO systems. For those that had duplex systems installed, an upgrade of the fiber infrastructure was required in order to migrate to these new speeds. For those that had installed MPO systems, these systems were based on 12 fiber MPO connections and the new 40G required only 8 fibers. Customers faced the option of either losing 4 out of every 12 fibers or deploying expensive “transition modules” which combined two 12 fiber MPO connections and split them back out to three 8 fiber MPO connections.

Fiber cable manufacturers were quick to react to this new dilemma and started to develop “Base-8” solutions. These new systems migrated the base unit of fiber bundles from 12 fibers to 8 fibers and MPO cabling systems started to emerge based on 8 fiber MPO and trunk cables in multiples of 8 fibers.

At the same time as releasing the 40Gb/s standard, the IEEE also launched the next speed of 100G as 100GBASE-SR10. This standard used ten duplex pairs of fibers, each transmitting 10Gb/s and requiring a twenty fiber MPO connector. This standard was short lived and very quickly superseded by a new 100GBASE-SR4 standard which utilized 4 lanes of 25Gb/s across 4 pairs of fibers, a further migration to 100Gb/s using Base-8 fiber cables and further strengthening the case for Base-8 connections.

So what does the future hold? The mainstream enterprise market is still migrating to 40Gb/s with the higher end of the market starting to move to 100Gb/s and the Hyperscale market firmly in the 100Gb/s and planning their move to the next speeds.

The next speeds have now emerged as 400G. There is likely to be very limited adoption on multi-mode fiber cabling which will utilize an SR8 solution – 8 lanes of 50Gb/s and requiring a 16 fiber MPO connector. Base-8 infrastructure can support this 16 fiber solution by combining two Base-8 MPO connectors per link. The vast majority of 400G systems will run over single-mode fiber with either multiple wavelengths across a duplex fiber connection or four lanes of 100G transmitted across four pairs of fibers – again utilizing Base-8 cabling.