Difference between 10GBASE-T,10GBASE-R,10GBASE-X and 10GBASE-W


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Ethernet over copper  Ethernet Business  Gigabit Ethernet  40Gbps Ethernet PHY   100Gbps Ethernet PHY   10Gbps Ethernet PHY   Ethernet types  


This page on 10GBASE-T vs 10GBASE-R vs 10GBASE-X vs 10GBASE-W mentions difference between 10GBASE-T, 10GBASE-R, 10GBASE-X and 10GBASE-W. As we know 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard was first published in IEEE 802.3ae in the year 2002. This release was designed to support fiber optic medium. Later on various other versions have been developed to take care of different medium, different data rates and distance coverages. Following are the different subgroups of 10 Gigabit ethernet.


The table below mentions 10 Gigabit Ethernet physical interface naming convention. As mentioned in 10GBASE-T, 10G stands for 10 Gigabit per second, BASE stands for Baseband and T stands for twisted pair of copper.


Prefix First Suffix=
Media type
Second Suffix=
PHYSICAL LAYER encoding Type
Third Suffix=
10GBASE- C=Copper (twoaxial)
S=Short
L=Long
E=Extended
Z=Ultra extended
T=Copper(UTP)
R= LAN PHY
W=WAN PHY
X=LAN PHY
4 = 4 WWDM wavelengths or 4 XAUI lanes
M = Multimode

Following is the major difference between 10GBASE-T, 10GBASE-R, 10GBASE-X and 10GBASE-W subgroups of 10 gigabit ethernet based on medium, data rate, distance coverage and physical layer specifications.

10GBASE-T

The version 10GBASE-T has following features.
• Supports 64B/65B signal encoding type
• supports transmission over twisted pair cabling
• Baseband 16 level PAM signalling, 3.125 information bits/symbol
• 128-DSQ plus LDPC(2048,1723), Tomlinson-Harashima precoder at Transmitter
• Full duplex echo cancelled transmission
• 800 Mbaud , less than 500 MHz bandwidth
• FEXT cancellation needed

10GBASE-R

The version 10GBASE-R has following features.
• Supports 64B/66B signal encoding
• Supports transmission over optical fiber medium
• 10GBASE-SR, 10GBASE-LR, 10GBASE-ER and 10GBASE-LRM configurations are available

10GBASE-X

The version 10GBASE-X has following features.
• Supports 8B/10B signal encoding
• Supports both copper (10GBASE-CX4) as well as fiber optic (10GBASE-LX4) mediums

10GBASE-W

The version 10GBASE-W has following features.
• Supports 64B/66B signal encoding type
• Supports transmissions over OC-192 SONET based optical fiber system
• 10GBASE-SW, 10GBASE-LW and 10GBASE-EW configurations are available

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