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Talk:Small Form-factor Pluggable

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Latest comment: 3 hours ago by Srleffler in topic Signals: "transmit on the right" seems supremely unhelpful
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SFP+ Line Rate

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Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

64b/66b encoding used for 16G is a more efficient encoding mechanism than 8b/10b used for 8G, and allows for the data rate to double without doubling the line rate. The result is the 14.025 Gbit/s line rate for 16G Fibre Channel.

This part is confusing. It seems to imply, that the data rate can be doubled within the same line rate by just moving from 8b/10b to 64b/66b. However, the overhead of 8b/10b is only 25% (compared to about 3%) while to double it would have to be at least 50%. Someone should elaborate on this, it seems unlikely to me, that the coding scheme alone can make up for the difference, the line rate sure has to increase by a much larger margin than the decrease in coding overhead can make up for. --ThomasG-gPM (talk) 17:55, 26 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

The line rate for 8G is 8G*10/8=10G. The line rate for 16G is 16G*66/64=16.5. Data rate is doubled from 8 to 16G but line rate only increases by a factor of 1.65. I think the last sentence is incorrect. Without multi-level encoding, you can't have a data rate higher than the line rate. I have removed this. ~Kvng (talk) 15:12, 26 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
I made some incorrect assumptions. Zac67 has reverted and touched this up. The full story can be found at Fibre Channel#Fibre Channel variants. ~Kvng (talk) 21:03, 26 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Pitcher?

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Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

@Kvng: and others: Could you please help me understand why the wikilink to pitcher - an article about the baseball/softball position - is appropriate for this article? I performed this search and don't see the wikilink used in any other non-baseball/softball related contexts. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:53, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

It's about a right-handed pitcher – one who throws a ball using his right hand, just like the SFP module transmitting out of its right-hand side (from its own POV). Perhaps you'd need to be an American to catch the drift. ;-) --Zac67 (talk) 19:30, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Zac67: I am an American who doesn't understand how the wikilink to pitcher aids the reader's understanding significantly. As someone who knows nothing about telecommunications, the description "they transmit on the right and receive on the left" seems clear enough without the wikilink. The link to handedness "about left- and right-handedness in humans" also seems like overlinking. GoingBatty (talk) 21:33, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
@GoingBatty: OK – I think it's a pretty good mnemonic (pitch with right hand, receive with left) but we can rephrase it. Just leave out the pitchers? --Zac67 (talk) 07:32, 11 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Zac67: Unless there is a reliable source demonstrating that the SFP transceivers are generally referred to as "right-handed pitchers", I suggest leaving out the metaphor. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 13:59, 11 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
GoingBatty, I rescued this nugget from Talk:Small form-factor pluggable transceiver/Archive 1#Port definition and incorporated it in the article. I'm never again going to wonder which side is TX and I assumed it would have similar benefit for readers. Saying that it Transmits from the right side is ambiguous because that doesn't specify the POV for right. We'd have to say something like Transmits from the left side when looking into the front of the transceiver That said, I'm unable to find a supporting reference in a quick search. ~Kvng (talk) 14:38, 12 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Agree with GoingBatty, unless there's RS, the pitcher reference shouldn't be included - it has issues (right hand vs left handed pitchers, cultural bias) that e.g. right-hand rule doesn't. Widefox; talk 11:46, 27 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Bolding

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Latest comment: 3 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

The guideline here says suggests significant alternative names. There is no need for thirteen terms in the lead to be bolded. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:02, 24 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

I've looked through it and they all look significant to me. Your count is high because it includes acronyms and their expansions in many cases. There are 25 redirects to this article so we're not including all of them. Does anyone else have input on this? ~Kvng (talk) 14:09, 25 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Seconding Kvng here. Redirects and significant alt names do require bolding. Expanded names without redirect don't, but I can't make out any of those. In theory, many of those redirects could have their own page but currently there's not enough material justifying a split. --Zac67 (talk) 14:22, 25 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
IIRC, there were more articles in the past and they were all merged here. ~Kvng (talk) 14:58, 25 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

All of the re-bolded terms are minor variants of the article title, e.g. QSFP. The reason that the MoS stresses significant is to avoid precisely the situation where a million things get bolded in the lead due to someone mechanically applying the "if it redirects here it has to be bold" rule. That there isn't enough material on the sub-articles to justify splitting them out is itself evidence that these are not individually notable enough terms to warrant bolding all (I stress again) thirteen of them. It makes the lead look like a mess. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 17:44, 28 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

I disagree. I use this page in my work. I searched Wikipedia for QSFP-DD and was redirected here and assumed I had been misdirected because I did not see QSFP-DD. I see you've gone back and forth on this and the bold has been restored. I hope this is where it stays. WP:ASTONISH should be more important than messiness. ~Kvng (talk) 14:57, 31 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Merge from Small Form Factor Committee

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Latest comment: 14 days ago16 comments6 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
unopposed Merge

Small Form Factor Committee was WP:PRODDED but I have WP:REFUNDED it because I beleive, at minimum. an opportunity to merge or redirect it here was missed. ~Kvng (talk) 15:35, 14 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

This is an old name/part of Storage Networking Industry Association AFAIK. I propose to change the merge target. Викидим (talk) 00:50, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Викидим, noted but we don't know when this consolidation happened. I suspect it was after they did their important work, I think it best to leave it under the original name. I had not heard of SNIA so this not satisfy WP:COMMONNAME. There is also WP:UNDUE issue given the current state of Storage Networking Industry Association. Do you support or oppose doing a merge? ~Kvng (talk) 12:06, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I   Agree with merge to either target. On one hand, in the modern WP:RS, SFFC is almost always mentioned with SNIA in parentheses next to it. On the other hand, tying it to only lasting product is also meaningful. In any case, I have spent some time searching for sources and did not find good ones. That said, to the best of my knowledge, the SFF Committee's long run as an independent body came to a close in mid-2016. Looking for a more permanent home, the committee's leadership transitioned its activities and specifications to the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). The activity of the SFF Committee still continues under the umbrella of the SFF Technology Affiliate (TA) Technical Working Group (TWG) within SNIA (see [1]). Викидим (talk) 20:32, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Викидим, thank you for looking into this. I was hoping we could avoid the question of where to merge it by just keeping it but if there are not sufficient sources to meet WP:NORG then we'll have to choose one. ~Kvng (talk) 20:57, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Comment — Merge what? All of this article may be challenged, and that won't change if the contents are moved. The article relies on a single source, and an ostensibly primary source at that. If we had some quality RSs I would support a merge. MWFwiki (talk) 19:34, 19 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think the primary sources are adequate for sourcing a section in another article, WP:PRIMARY, they're just not any good for establishing notability for a stand-alone article. If we removed all the primary sourced material from our technical articles, there'd be a ghastly hole, WP:DEMOLISH. ~Kvng (talk) 21:06, 19 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
There's a not insignificant amount of information, here. I am pretty soft and pretty generous when it comes to folks utilizing primaries, especially for relatively simple, non-controversial facts. But a single primary for this entire block is a bit much. Further, it's not just the fact that it's primary; It could also be challenged under NPOV or a similar/related policy. Indeed, it would seem this article has already been hit with a neutrality tag. Merging won't resolve that.

Lastly — and possibly most-importantly — it would seem that the (archived) source doesn't verify virtually any of the article. The source doesn't really say much of anything. Unless the archived site isn't loading properly for me, which is a possibility given that I'm currently on mobile.

So, it's not just a PRIMARY concern. It's PRIMARY, NPOV, and not verifiable.

Again, I'm not strongly against merger or anything, but I'm just letting you know that someone will probably nuke it eventually if no additional RSs are added. MWFwiki (talk) 21:20, 19 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Kvng, @MWFwiki, @Викидим: Can a decision be reached on this? If not, I believe simply redirecting this troublesome stub to Small Form Factor Committee would be acceptable per WP:BURDEN, and if someone wanted to start the article again from scratch then WP:TNT. Cheers! Johnson524 15:57, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
There's definitely not a consensus to keep it and there are objections to a merge. I don't see a persuasive argument for a WP:TNT delete. Whether or not any sort of merge happens, a significant open question is whether to then redirect to Small Form-factor Pluggable (the committee's most notable product) or Storage Networking Industry Association (the organization into which the committee has been absorbed). ~Kvng (talk) 16:54, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
While sourcing should be improved, this doesn't prevent a merge. WP:V is satisfied as long as reliable sources can be found for anything that is challenged or is likely to be. It does not encourage challenging unreferenced material just because one can. (See also WP:POINT) There is little doubt that reliable sources for the existence and function of the SFFC could be found if we looked.
I think it would be better to merge to Storage Networking Industry Association. That article seems like a better place to discuss the standard-setting process and the organization(s) behind it, leaving the SFFP article to discuss the technology. A reader of the SFFP article is less likely to be interested in the organization than a reader of the SNIA article might be.--Srleffler (talk) 17:44, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
Support @Srleffler's proposal. If there's no further opposition, I feel like this would be a good decision to end this long-running merger discussion. Cheers! Johnson524 17:50, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
Support Srleffler's proposal. Викидим (talk) 18:20, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I support Srleffler's analysis and proposal. It looks like there may be enough support for a consensus here. I'm interested to know if MWFwiki is inclined to soften their stance based on recent conversation. ~Kvng (talk) 21:31, 17 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm not nor have I been necessarily against merger (which is why I labeled my comment as exactly that). I just feel that the content is on (relatively) shaky ground and if-challenged, would leave the merger moot. But I don't know enough about the subject to state whether the primary source involved here is stating simple, uncontroversial facts. MWFwiki (talk) 21:53, 17 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
Support Srleffler's analysis and proposal. --Zac67 (talk) 08:33, 18 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Signals: "transmit on the right" seems supremely unhelpful

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Latest comment: 3 hours ago3 comments3 people in discussion

"SFP transceivers are right-handed: From their perspective, they transmit on the right and receive on the left."

In every area of electronics that I can think of, connectors are described from the perspective of a user looking at the connector from the exterior of the device, which is when they need to know which port is which. The user will not be interacting with the ports from the interior, so it seems highly confusing to describe the connectors as viewed from the interior of the device looking out.

So far as I can tell, this is not a convention anywhere in electronics except on this wikipedia page and a few other web pages that use identical wording, so presumably by copy/paste one direction or the other.

It seems that the interior view of the connector was chosen just so that it could match to a strained baseball-pitcher analogy that has since been removed (the surrounding discussion is above on this talk page).

The interior perspective is so unexpected that it's only because of the adjacent picture showing the transmit port clearly on the LEFT that I was alerted to this contrived description.

Is there any reason that the description can't be simply "when an SFP module is installed in conventional fashion, Transmit is on the left, and Receive is on the right". More to the point, why is this even an issue? Is it possible to plug cables in incorrectly? Are the ports not marked? Can one deduce which is which, such as glow of laser or whatever?

Also, the opening statement that "SFP transceivers are right-handed" is considerably over-general, since it really only applies to ones that have two single-direction optical ports, whereas there are SFP modules with other types of external ports. Gwideman (talk) 22:42, 31 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed – since the removed mnemonic doesn't seem to be common, there's no reason to stick to the 'right-handedness' of duplex SFPs. Is it possible to plug cables in incorrectly? Yes, it is - a fairly large number of duplex LC connectors are separable and if assembled incorrectly, the required crossover may be missing and the link won't come up. Usually, it's sufficient to cross the fibers though, no need for identifying transmit and receive sides. Markings are common but not standard. And yes, this only applies to duplex LC connectors, not to simplex LC (for bidi PHYs), MPO (w/ multi-lane MMF) or similar. --Zac67 (talk) 10:10, 1 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yep, without the "pitcher" analogy the description of the connectors as "right-handed" was increasing confusion rather than decreasing it. I agree with the discussion above that describing the module as a "right-handed pitcher" is a great way to visualize and remember it, but that makes cultural assumptions that are not ideal for a global encyclopedia.--Srleffler (talk) 14:59, 1 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
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