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Fanout Technology in
40G Data Center

Driven by need for high speed Ethernet and increasing services like Cloud and virtual data center,
migration from 10G to 40G is unstoppable. Except adding more devices and cables to get higher
bandwidth and throughput, higher port density is also the widely accepted solution for data center
migrating to 40G. To overcome the challenge of both data rate and cabling, fanout technology is
being wisely applied in 40G data center in large scale. The principle of fanout is really simple. Its
kind of like the water pipeline in our building: water is transferred from the trunk pipeline in a
building. Then trunk pipeline fans out into several pipelines that have smaller diameters to bring the
water to every house.
Its common that a device needs to be connected to two or several devices with different physical
interface. Thus, the superiority of fanout technology is brought into full play, especially in the
distribution layer of 40G data center and adapting lower data rate to 40G in cabling. This post will
introduce several fanout/breakout assemblies that are widely used in 40G data center.

40G MPO Fanout Cables

The first introduced fanout assembly for 40G data center is MPO fanout cable. A MPO fanout cable
is a multi-fiber optical cable that contains several individual tight buffered optical fibers with one
end terminated with a male/female MPO connector and the other end usually terminated with
several LC connectors.

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There are a variety of MPO fanout cables. For 40G cabling, what most customers need is breakout
cable which is able to fan out into 12 fibers or 24 fibers. The above picture shows a typical 12-fiber
MPO breakout cable (also called MPO harness cable) with OM3 optical fiber as the transmission
media. This 12-fiber MPO fanout cable is terminated with 6 duplex LC connectors on one end and a
male MPO connector on the other end, which can work from MPO trunk backbone assemblies to LC
fiber rack system in high density backbone cabling from 40G device to 10G devices.
There is also a little bit smaller MPO fanout cable, of which the fibers fan out directly from the MPO
connectors. This mini MPO harness cable can be easily put into patch panel and increase the cabling
density effectively.

Another special type of MPO fanout cable is MPO cassette designed for those who want to have
everything in neat and tidy. It breaks the traditional design of the fanout cable. By housing one or
several mini size MPO fanout cables in a cassette, MPO cassette can offer better cable protection
and management. For a 12-fiber MPO cassette, there will be a 12-fiber mini direct fanout MPO
cable inside the cassette. With one MPO in the back side of the cassette and six duplex LC
connectors in the front (shown in the above picture). This type of cassette can be installed in the
standard rack in data center. To achieve higher cable density, more 12-fiber or 24-fiber mini MPO
fanout cables are installed for 40G transmission. For example, the following is a picture of a 24-fiber
MPO cassette containing two 12-fiber fanout cables, thus there are two 12-fiber MPO connectors
on the cassette. A 24-fiber MPO cassette can also have a mini size 24-fiber fanout cable in side the
cassette. This cassette will only have one 24-fiber MPO connector in the back side. No matter what
the fiber count and connector type are, these MPO cassettes can be customized in Fiberstore
according to your requirements.

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40G Fanout Direct Attach Cables

Direct attach cable offering direct interconnection for devices in data center also has fanout design.
Converting one form factor to a different form factor is necessary in many cases. For example, a 40G
device may be connected to one or several 10G devices for distribution or adapting. With fanout
DAC this process would be much easier. This pre-terminated components can also increase the
reliability of data center effectively.
A 40G DAC usually has a 40G QSFP+ connector on one end, no matter it uses copper or fiber as the
transmission media. On the other end of 40G DAC can be terminated with four 10G XFP connectors
or four 10G SFP+ connectors.

Sometimes it also needs to convert QSFP+ to LC interface. There is also another type of 40G DAC
can satisfy this requirement. This kind of DAC is attached with a QSFP+ on one end and several LC
Fiberstore (FS.COM) | Fanout Technology in 40G Data Center

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connectors on the other end. For example, the above picture shows an active optical cable (AOC)
with one end plugged into a QSFP+ switch and the other end attached with four duplex LC
connectors which are separately linked to four 10G SFP+ transceivers. These 10G transceivers are
then plugged into 10G switch with SFP+ ports. In this way, 40G cabling to 10G cabling is achieved.
Fanout technology is playing an important role in 40G data center. Products like 40G break out cable,
cassette and 40G break out direct attached cable can all be customized in Fiberstore. Different
connectors, cable length, fiber count etc. can all be specially designed according to your application.
Please contact sales@fs.com for more details about fanout products in 40G data center.

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Contact Us
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Technology Park, No.6, Keyuan Road,
Nanshan District, Shenzhen 518057,
China
Tel: +86 (755) 8300 3611
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Email: sales@fs.com

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Email: sales@fs.com

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Notice: This document is for informational purposes only and does not set forth any warranty, expressed or
implied, concerning any equipment, equipment features, or service offered or to be offered by Fiberstore.
Fiberstore reserves the right to make changes to this document at any time, without notice, and assumes no
responsibility for its use. This information document describes features that may not be currently available.
Contact a Fiberstore sales team for information on feature and product availability.

Fiberstore (FS.COM) | Fanout Technology in 40G Data Center