400G, 800G, and Terabit Pluggable Optics: What You Need to Know - BRKOPT-2699#
Cisco Live US 2025 (San Diego) digest Program Core pick San Diego · 8–12 June 2025
Mark Nowell (Cisco), Errol Roberts (Cisco)
- Why: The optics roadmap is now the binding constraint on DC fabric design — power, reach, and breakout options determine what topologies are even buildable. Nowell is a long-standing IEEE 802.3 optics contributor, which makes this a standards-insider survey rather than a datasheet read.
- What: A survey of current 400G pluggable optics and their applications, next-generation 800G/1.6T form factors including breakout use cases, the status of 800 Gb/s and 1.6 Tb/s Ethernet standardization, and co-packaged optics (integrating optical interfaces into switch ASICs), framed by industry dynamics and AI-driven demand (from abstract only).
- How: Technology survey across form factors, IEEE standardization tracks, and co-packaging directions, covering both coherent and noncoherent optics.
- Where applicable: Broadly applicable to anyone specifying optical interconnect for DC or DCI — the standards and form-factor content is vendor-neutral even though the speaker is Cisco. Assumes working deployment knowledge of optical modules.