100G and 400G Optics Cheat Sheet

A few months ago, I needed to quickly come up to speed on 100G and 400G optics, so I worked on a cheat-sheet for myself. With the variety of multiplexing techniques and encoding schemes used, there’s a bit more to keep track of than with 10G and 40G optics.

The faster speeds couldn’t be achieved with the same approach as 10G optics. These optics all use either more channels (signals on more strands with MPO cabling, or more signals on the same strand with integrated WDM), or more advanced encoding schemes (like PAM-4 instead of NRZ). Most of these options also are single-mode based.

I’ve posted my table below with notes on some of the more common 100G and 400G optics in hopes that it might help others. I’m specifically not including 400G ZR / ZR+ optics. These will likely have a big impact on the industry in the coming years, but the characteristics can vary quite a bit from vendor to vendor, so it’s hard to summarize in a simple table.

It’s also worth noting that particularly with 400G optics, power and thermal limitations start to become a significant limiting factor.

100G + 400G Optic Cheat Sheet