25G Ethernet has been hitting the web world at a sudden rate and may eventually become the fastest IEEE Ethernet standard ever completed.

25G cable is divided into 25G SFP28 direct attach cable and 25G SFP28 active optical cable, both of them can transmit data at 25Gbps. What are the differences between them?

In this article, ETU-Link will focus on the differences between the two cables.

What is a 25G Direct Attach Cable?

25G DAC cable using silver conductor and foam insulation core, it has good attenuation performance and low delay performance, which make the signal transmission is correct, and can increase the transmission speed, is a short connection solution instead of the optical transceiver, the price is much cheaper than the same type of optical transceiver, in short distance connection applications has been widely welcomed.

What is a 25G Active Optical Cable?

25G AOC cable can be overcome the bandwidth limitation of traditional high-speed cable, and the 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 higher performance. It is widely used in high-speed, high-density, and low-power data center networks.

What is difference in structure between 25G Direct Attach Cable and 25G Active Optical Cable?

The 25G DAC is made up of a copper cable and a fiber-optic transceivers at both ends. The connector is similar to the interface of the optical transceiver.But the connector modules on high-speed cables do not have expensive lasers, which greatly reduces the cost of short-range applications.

The 25G AOC consists of optical transceiver devices at both ends and composed of different length of OM3 or OM4 multimode optical fibers.The transceiver devices at both ends can provide the function of photoelectric conversion and optical transmission. This function ensures data transmission stability and application flexibility.

Compares to the 25G DAC, What are the advantages of 25G AOC?

1. The volume of 25G active optical cable is one-half of 25G high-speed cable, the weight is a quarter of it, so 25G active optical cable is much lighter than 25G high-speed cable;

2. 25G active optical cable also has better transmission performance and bit error rate, and the BER can reach 10-15;

3. 25G active optical cable has lower transmission power on the system link.

The 25G technology is the foundation of the 100G(4*25Gbps) Ethernet standard. Compared with the 40G technology, the 25G technology can provide higher port density and reduce cost, so the 25G technology has a promising prospect.

With the rapid development of 25G Ethernet technology, ETU-Link has introduced two types of cables, 25G SFP28 DAC and 25G SFP28 AOC to meet the 25G network needs of customers. You can also select our 25G DAC cable or 25G AOC cable customized service according to your needs. For customized details, you can email us: sales@etulinktechnology.com.