On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, Faisal Imtiaz wrote:
I was looking for feedback on the following question:-
When connecting two MM SFP/SFP+/XFP 's together...(short range).
What should be the best practice receive power range ?
SX (1G) / SR (10G) / SR10 (100G) gear generally has a receive threshold that's higher than the maximum launch power. They are designed for short-reach applications (in-building, data center, etc), so no attenuation is needed.
Is it true that if the rx power is higher than (x?) then it shortens the life of the optics ? (assumption being made here is that MAX Rx Power is not being exceed as per the spec sheets of the optics)
On short-reach optics, this should never be a problem. On long-reach optics, receiver saturation will generally result in link errors/flaps, and possibly high rx power warnings (depending on the gear on the receiving end), however, these can be addressed using in-line attenuators. On very long-reach optics, such as ZX (1G) and ER/ZR (10G), it is possible to damage the receivers with too hot of a signal because they are designed for long spans and a certain amount of distance-based attenuation is factored into the optical power budget. jms