XENPAK

Urfan Khaliq · ‎08-23-2007

Hi all,

Thanks for all your help so far. Some of you may have read that I am currently in the process of upgrading our 6509's and Client Access Switches.

The 6509 sups are to be upgraded to sup32's with 2 10G uplinks... Currently they have sup 1As with 1Gig uplinks which are GBIC based and use SC-ST cables to connect to the fibre patch panel (which is connected to the other cab holding the other 6509)...

However the new sup32 has XENPAK connectors for its 10g interfaces...Can any one tell me what kind of cable will be needed to connect to the new XENPAK?

Currently we use Cisco, 1000BASE-SX Short Wavelength GBIC (Multimode) cable to connect to the 6509 sup1a engine.

If anyone can help, provide some info I would be very grateful.

Thanks in advance

andrew.burns · ‎08-24-2007

Hi,

The choice is influenced by the quality of your fiber cabling and what distance you need to drive the signal. If you have OM3 fiber (for example) then you can use SR Xenpak's at each end and get 300m with no problems. Lower quality fiber starts to give problems as an SR can only drive 26 meters on standard FDDI grade MMF - in that case you could use LX4's with mode-conditioning patch cords to again reach 300m (However it's a lot more expensive).

It might be worth getting some specialist advice from a local cabling contractor, otherwise you risk all kinds of performance and connectivity issues.

HTH

Andrew.