How did we go from 1G to 400G? The history of pluggable optics, a conversation with Ray Nering, 3/4

Have you ever wondered why pluggable optics exist? Have you ever wondered what acronyms like QSFP, LR4, FEC, and PAM4 actually mean? In this episode I continue my conversation with my colleague Ray Nering. He explains to me how a lot of these came to be, starting from the days of 1Gb GBIC all the way up to today's 400Gb QSFP-DD. This is the third part of a four-episode conversation with Ray. In this episode we get into 100Gb pluggables and then the QSFP-DD form factor. Pat Chou, Cisco Optics Product Manager Ray Nering is a colleague of mine in the Cisco Optics product management group and over the years has held senior management positions at other companies in the optics space, such as AT&T Microelectronics, Lucent, JDSU, Agere, Optium, and Lightwire. Additional resources Cisco Optics blogs: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog (subscribe at https://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CiscoOpticsBlog ) Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics Timestamps 02:06 4x bandwidth at 2.5x cost 06:25 Enter 100G modules 12:33 QSFP28 ramps in 2016 17:56 QSFP-DD form factor considerations Music credits Sunny Morning by FSM Team | https://www.free-stock-music.com/artist.fsm-team.html Upbeat by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com