25G DAC cable and 25G active optical cable can realize 25Gbps data transmission, but what's the difference between them? Today ETU-Link will introduce 25G DAC and 25G AOC in detail.

1. What is 25G QSFP28 DAC high speed cable:

25G DAC cable adopts silver plated conductor and foam insulated core wire, which has excellent attenuation performance and low delay performance, so that the signal transmission is correct, and the transmission speed can be improved. It is a short-distance connection solution to replace optical module. The price is much cheaper than the same type of optical module, and it is widely welcomed in the application of short-distance connection.

25G SFP28 to SFP28 DAC is a cost-effective solution for short-distance link transmission. It can establish 25G link through SFP28 port of the switch, which conforms to IEEE P802.3by and SFF-8402 SFP28 standards, and is widely used in data center or Supercomputing Center system scenarios.

2. What is 25G SFP28 AOC cable:

25G active optical cable can overcome the bandwidth limitation of traditional high-speed cable, and this 25G active optical cable can provide an ideal alternative solution for high-speed cable and short-distance SFP28 optical module, and the signal is more complete and performance is higher, so it is widely used in high-speed, high-density and low-power data center network.

The transmission distance of 25G SFP28 AOC and OM3 multimode fiber can reach 70m when they are used together, and 100m when they are used together with OM4 multimode fiber. It is suitable for short-distance data communication and interconnection applications, and provides an economic and effective way for the connection between the rack and adjacent racks.

3. 25G DAC cable VS 25G AOC cable:

25G DAC cable can support up to 25Gbps transmission rate, which is higher than the data transmission rate supported by traditional copper cable; 25G active optical cable is suitable for 25G and 10G Ethernet, high-capacity IO and SFP+ interface, data center and inter rack connection.

The volume and weight of 25G active optical cable are one-half and one quarter of 25G DAC cable respectively, so 25G active optical cable is much lighter than 25G high-speed cable; there is no need to upgrade equipment, 25G active optical cable has a throughput of up to 25Gbps; 25G active optical cable has better transmission performance and bit error rate, BER up to 10-15; 25G active optical cable has lower transmission power on the system link.

4. Structure of 25G DAC cable and 25G AOC cable:

The 25G DAC cable is composed of a copper cable and a fiber-optic transceiver at both ends. Its connector is similar to the interface of the optical module, but the connector module on the high-speed cable does not have an expensive laser, thus greatly reducing the cost of short-distance application.

25G active optical cable is composed of optical transceiver at both ends and OM3 or OM4 multimode optical fiber with different length. The transceiver at both ends can provide photoelectric conversion and optical transmission function, which ensures the stability of data transmission and flexibility of application.

5. Application of 25G DAC cable and 25G AOC cable:

25G DAC cable is mainly used in switches / routers / HbAS, servers and data storage devices, 40GBs / 100GBs Ethernet and fibre channel.

25G active optical cable is suitable for 25G and 10G Ethernet, high-capacity IO and SFP+ interface, data center and rack to rack connection.

ETU-Link’s 25G direct attach cable can meet the user's demand for 25G network construction. In general, choosing SFP28 DAC / AOC cable in the short distance link of 25G network has the advantage of high cost performance.