DAC cable is often used in short-distance cabling schemes in data centers. Compared with other AOC active optical cable and optical module transmission schemes, it has high performance cost ratio , but the short transmission distance is its limitation. If the equipment spacing exceeds the length of direct attach cable, it is necessary to choose AOC active optical cable and optical module scheme. This article, ETU-LINK, will introduce the data center cabling solution-DAC direct attach cable.

DAC cable adopts the integrated design of module connector and copper core cable, which is cost-effective and can save 50% of the budget. It is an ideal solution for short-distance transmission inside or between cabinets. In TOR cabling design, TOR switches and servers are usually placed in the same cabinet, with at least one switch in each rack, and the servers in the rack are usually connected to the switches through copper cables. Therefore, there is no need to choose products with long transmission distance for the connection products between the server and TOR switch. Taking the 10G network as an example, the interconnection of 10G SFP+ ports in the equipment with 10G DAC direct attach cable is the most cost-effective, and the procurement cost can be minimized without affecting the transmission performance.

Common DAC direct attach cables have transmission rates of 1G, 10G, 25G, 40G, 100G, etc. At present, the demand for 10G DAC direct attach cables is larger than  other direct attach DACs. It adopts silver-plated copper conductor to prevent oxidation and corrosion, multi-layer high shielding protection, low crosstalk, and ensures the integrity and stability of transmission signals. The length of the cable can be customized according to the needs, up to 15 meters in length, and generally 1~7 meters in length is the best. direct attach cables can be applied to switch fabric I/O in storage area networks, network-connected storage and storage servers, such as ultra-high bandwidth switches and routers, data center cabling, and high-density connections between infrastructure network devices.