SFP vs. SFP+

Thu Feb 17 23:25:13 UTC 2011

Jason - there are no SFP-10G parts based off of the original SFP; they
all are based on the SFP+ standard, so there will be no issues with the
optic not being able to work at the full 10Gbps it's rated for.

Sam Chesluk 
Network Hardware Resale

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Lixfeld [mailto:jason at lixfeld.ca] 
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 3:00 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: SFP vs. SFP+

I was asked today what the difference between SFP and SFP+ is.  I did
really know, so I looked it up and it seems that the SFP spec provides
capabilities for data rates up to 4.25Gb/s, whereas SFP+ supports up to
10Gb/s.  Naturally, this made me wonder whether or not an optic that
supported 10GbE always conformed to the SFP+ standard inherently, or if
there are cases where a 10GbE optic might only support the SFP standard,
thus having a 4.25Gb/s bottleneck.