Over the next year I'm looking to buy 20 to 80 gigabit ethernet converters, going from 850 nm to 1310 nm. What is the cheapest way to do this reliably?
I priced out a new switch and price is too high especially for the 1310 nm SFPs. Can someone suggest a way to do this on the cheap? I'm perfectly willing to consider high quality used or surplus equipment, and older discontinued products.
Can you put $ values on the statement you just made?
David Ross
Switches with SFP modules were going about $400 to $700 and the 1310 nm SFPs were running $300 to $500. Looks like about $700 to $1K for the package.
I'm budgeted about $300 per converter.
How big are your groupings? Or is it half in a central distribution location and the other half as individual units at destinations?
Just thinking that if you had groupings of them, then -possibly- something like a switch with two line cards, hardwired with each type, with bridging configured between each respective port pair.
No groupings. A 1310 nm run from the SONET multiplexor to each end user location, and the converter is just to assist them in hooking into their existing equipment, which is likely all 850nm gigE.
Then it's a little more than just transceivers: you're probably going from LX or SZ single mode on one side to SX multimode on the other ?
Sort of like the (too expensive for your purpose) Allied Telesyn AT-MC1001-10?
I also see products from netoptics.com pheenet.com (MFC1GSX/LX-10) networktaps.com (I think that's reselling something else) volktek.com NGF-728 milan.com (transition networks) e.g. SFMFF1314-280
Tired of looking... these mostly look much more expensive than you were hoping for.
AT-MC1001-10 looks like a good solution if I can find some cheap. I'll be on the hunt for those and I appreciate the recommendation.
Others:
signamax.com 065-198XLD Canoga Perkins L332 FlexPoint 1000FF MetroStar MSM2500U card (intended as part of MetroStar Rack) tccomm.com TC3006 fibrolan.com GSM1001 (hmmm, strange how much the part numbers look like Allied Telesyn's...) fiberdyne FTX-250S-SL-10 (seen on ancscience.com) ovislink.ca EM100SLC-10 Shenzhen Fiberscape Technology,
Okay, that's enough looking ;-)
(snip)
I don't see this on the Allied Telesyn web site.
The ones I do see convert from/to 1000baseT.
I presume the AT-MC1001-10 decodes the signal and then regenerates it, similar to the function of repeaters, though without collision detection.
Is it possible to do fiber to fiber without decoding the bits, and without retiming? Or maybe without decoding but with retiming? This reminds me of some media converters from the 10base?? days that weren't repeaters.
-- glen
At the risk of having an "emily litella" moment, it seems that just about any conversion method would be more expensive than replacing the cards wouldn't it? A conversion means having two sets of optics, replacing the gige cards means only one set of optics right?
rick jones
We can purchase 40 of 1000LX line cards in a special situation from a telecom that surplused them for a savings of about $120K over the cost of buying new 1000SX cards.
To play off the old saying: Cheap - Convenient - Reliable: you can only choose two. In this case we are seeing if we can get cheap and reliable, and sacrifice convenience.
I may be digging myself deeper, but when you say linecards I'm reading "cards in the routers" (or whatnot) and I was wondering if you could just put LX into the hosts?
rick jones
It would depend on the customer at each endpoint. Sure, it would be great if the customer could just slide an SFP into an existing switch or router and accept the 1000LX connection without conversion.
I take for granted that many users will have a 1000SX card on a Windows Firewall and not have much desire to go shopping for a replacement.
But with $300 1310 nm SFP's, it doesn't seem like there would be much room left in your $300 budget for the rest of the converter (a PCB, power supply, 850 nm optic, case, misc parts and components).
I've done much more complex designs than this before. Are there any special requirements (like that the box must be completely sealed, or operate over a specific temperature range)? What power source(s) are available (guessing AC 120V, but it doesn't hurt to ask).
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