January/February 2019 I 39
Evolving Standards & Procedures for
Designing and Testing MPO-Based Systems
As data center designs focus on East-West traffic and move toward
leaf-spine, or full-mesh, architectures, systems using multi-fiber push
on (MPO) connectors and quad small form-factor pluggable (QSFP)
ports are becoming more predominant. While MPO connectivity
and QSFP transceivers are not new, the ability to use them as a single
port, which then can break out to multiple lanes of slower speeds,
creates more of a challenge in the physical layer. This article reviews
data center architecture trends, applications and transmissions
standards utilizing MPO connectivity, some of the different options
available when deploying MPO infrastructure, and the testing of
MPO connectivity.
By Rodney Casteel, RCDD,
NTS, OSP and Ed Gastle
