Nowadays communications industry is highly competitive, everyone expects to gain a competitive advantage, including the terms of performance, efficiency and cost. While many data center focus on network adapter and switch configurations, there is one extremely basic but equally effective way to improve deploying data centers: that is interconnection Cables, both Direct Attach Cable (DAC) and Active Optical Cable (AOC).

The AOC cable (click on the link for 40G AOC product information) has a longer transmission distance and reduced electromagnetic interference. Its advent has brought this misunderstanding: all aspects of the network should adopt this new technology. However, in the data center, it is often wisest to use DAC copper cables  because DAC provides significant advantages in terms of capital expenditure, operating expenses, performance, and reliability.There are some advantages of DAC compared with AOC cable:

①Distance

The DAC can be extended several meters, depending on the network speed, which is usually more than enough for interconnection within a data center.

Whether connected between servers in a single rack or between switches in a cluster, DAC provides this capability: reliable and benefit transmission with the highest available bandwidth.

②Cost

From the cost of capital, DAC can save a lot of cost. In general, DAC cables cost two to five times less than comparable lengths of AOC cable. In addition, because the DAC does not consume power, and because of its low thermal design cooling requirements, it can significantly save the operating expenses of data centers.

Hundreds of kilowatts of power can be saved by using a DAC cable instead of an AOC cable.

③Reliability and Speed

One of the biggest advantages of a DAC is reliability, which is measured by mean time between failures (MTBF). The MTBF of passive copper cable has about 500 million hours - typically an order of magnitude higher than the industry standard for AOC cables. The DAC provides one big benefit for enterprise data centers, where reliable data transfer is critical: avoiding downtime.

The DAC copper cable can support up to 100 Gbps over a distance of 8 meters, which is ideal for a data center deployment environment while providing lower latency, better reliability and lower power consumption, the cost is much lower than AOC cable.

ETU-Link can provide cost-effective DAC copper cable and AOC cable, if you

want to know more details, you can visit website: www.etulink.com.