Have you ever wondered why pluggable optics exist? Have you ever wondered what acronyms like QSFP, LR4, FEC, and PAM4 actually mean? In this first episode I start a conversation with my colleague Ray Nering. He explains to me how a lot of these came to be, starting from the days of 1Gb GBIC all the way up to today's 400Gb QSFP-DD.

This is the first part of a four-episode conversation with Ray. In this episode we start at the beginning, with GBIC and SFP. He also talks about why pluggables were needed when they started and a whole bunch more.

- Pat Chou, Cisco Optics Product Manager

Ray Nering is a colleague of mine in the Cisco Optics product management group and over the years has held senior management positions at other companies in the optics space, such as AT&T Microelectronics, Lucent, JDSU, Agere, Optium, and Lightwire.

Additional resources

Cisco Optics blogs: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog (subscribe at https://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CiscoOpticsBlog )

Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen

Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics

Timestamps

3:48 How did pluggable optics start

6:34 The problem with early non-pluggables

8:56 Pay as you grow model

11:00 What is SERDES

12:48 What happens when your data center grows

Music credits

Sunny Morning by FSM Team | https://www.free-stock-music.com/artist.fsm-team.html

Upbeat by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com