What are the optical and electrical interfaces of a switch and the differences between them?

Fibre Channel switch ports are usually used to insert optical modules. Optical ports include SFP, SFP+, SFP28, QSFP+, and QSFP28. The advantage of optical port over electrical port is that optical port uses optical fiber for transmission, and the transmission distance can reach tens of kilometers, while electrical port uses copper cable for transmission, and the transmission distance is less than 100 meters.

You can select the corresponding optical module according to the type of optical port. At present, there are 1.25G SFP optical module, 10G SFP+ optical module, 25G SFP28 optical module, 40G QSFP+ optical module, and 100G QSFP28 optical module on the market. Common optical module interfaces are LC, SC, and MPO interfaces.

The electrical port is also known as the cable interface (RJ45). The electrical port connects to the network cable, with the rate of 10/100/1000M and 10G.