What Does Small Form-Factor Pluggable Transceiver (SFP) Mean?
A small form-factor pluggable (SFP) transceiver is a compact, hot-swappable, input/output transceiver used in data communication and telecommunications networks. SFP interfaces between communication devices like switches, routers and fiber optic cables, and performs conversions between optical and electrical signals. SFP transceivers support communications standards including synchronous optical networking (SONET)/synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH), gigabit ethernet and fiber channel. They also allow the transport of fast Ethernet and gigabit Ethernet LAN packets over time-division-multiplexing-based WANs, as well as the transmission of E1/T1 streams over packet-switched networks.
SFP is also called a mini gigabit interface converter (GBIC) because its function is similar to the GBIC transceiver but with much smaller dimensions.
