The development of optical module products from the perspective of the post-100G era

2013 was called the "first year of commercial use in China" for 100G technology. So far, the three major domestic operators have begun to commercialize 100G networks on a large scale. With the continuous expansion of data centers, the connection bandwidth between data center network nodes has increased. It has developed from the traditional 100G to the 200G or even 400G era, that is, it has entered the "post-100G era". In this article, ETU-LINK will take a look at the development of optical module products in the post-100G era.

100Gb/s technology is divided into domestic standards and international standards. The domestic standardization work is mainly formulated by the Transport Network Working Group (WG1) and the Optical Device Working Group (WG4) of the Transport Network and Access Network Working Committee (TC6) of CCSA. International standards are mainly formulated by standards organizations such as ITU-T, IEEE and OIF. While the application of 100G on the existing network is gradually on the track, the industry's research on super 100G technology is also being carried out simultaneously. From the perspective of the development and evolution of high-speed transmission technology, the integration of optical transport network and IP layer is the general trend, and 400G optical transmission technology will become the key technology in the post-100G era.

Recently, the optical network architect published a report entitled "Application Status of Optical Modules in Data Centers in the Post-100G Era", sharing the use of optical modules under the trend of adopting new network structures in domestic data centers. The report mentioned 100G optical modules, 200G optical modules and 400G optical modules. 100G optical modules are concentrated in the access end. Users can convert 1 200G QSFP56 BASE-SR4 to 2 100G QSFP56 BASE-SR2 through Y-Cable, or directly choose 100G DSFP BASE-SR2. Popular products in 200 optical modules The main ones are 200G QSFP56 BASE-SR4 with a transmission distance of 100m and 200G QSFP56 BASE-FR4 with a transmission distance of 2km. Among the 400G optical modules deployed in batches, the data communication part is mainly based on QSFP-DD packaged optical modules, 400G BASE-SR8, 400G BASE-DR4, 400G BASE-FR4 three types; the wavelength division line side adopts CFP2 DCO and QSFPDD ZR .

The report further analyzes that in the post-100G era, manufacturers have different choices of technical routes, but as the industry's requirements for cost and network architecture uniformity continue to increase, the choices of manufacturers will gradually converge, that is, optical module products. will become increasingly similar.