[c-nsp] Single-strand SFPs

[Bill Wichers]

> I have a customer who is running short on fiber. I've seen companies that
> have "media converters" that will take in a tx/rx pair and output both on
> a
> single strand.

Some of the vendors call this BWDM for Bidirectional Wavelength Division
Multiplexing. Most of the ones I've seen are 1310/1550nm, with RX on one
wavelegth and TX on the other. Reach is usually reduced a bit with these
compared to doing it "traditionally" with two strands.

I'm a bit wary of BWDM SFPs but that's mostly just because I haven't ever
used one :-) Metrobility makes some decent BWDM media converters you could
try if you can't find the SFPs you're looking for, or you could try some
CWDM SFPs and an optical wavelength splitter on each end of your link and
free up some fiber that way rather than using the single-strand SFPs or
media converters.

     -Bill

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Waveform Technology
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