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Cisco Optics Podcast Episode 1

How did we go from 1G to 400G? The history of pluggable optics, a conversation with Ray Nering, part 1 of 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 first episode I start a 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 first part of a four-episode conversation with Ray. In this episode we start at the beginning, with GBIC and SFP. He also talks about why pluggables were needed when they started and a whole bunch more.
-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.

Listen to Episode 1

Apple  |  Spotify  |  Google  |  Amazon  |  TuneIn  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud|  Spotify  |  Google  |  Amazon  |  TuneIn  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

Timestamps

3:48    How did pluggable optics start
6:34    The problem with early non-pluggables
8:56    Pay as you grow model
11:00  What is SERDES
12:48  What happens when your data center grows

Music credits

Sunny Morning by FSM Team
Upbeat by Mixaund

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Additional resources

Cisco Optics Blogs

Cisco Optics YouTube Playlist

Cisco Optics Web Page