The protocols for 100G are some what less clear. The contenders are SR10, LR10, SR4, LR4, SR4 FEC, LR4 FEC, it can be some what confusing. In the end all of these protocols provide ingress/egress ethernet ports with a data rate of 100.00Gbps and packet rate of 148.88Mpps. (Its surreal if not scary we`re now dealing with 148,888,000 packets per second!)
There`s alot of difference is how each protocol is encoded and what the final bits down the pipe actually look like. Lets dig into the different protocols at a high level.
Using 10 lanes of 10G is the easiest way to achieve a 100Gbps link. The first thing to be clear is, 100G LR10/SR10 != 10 x 10G LAG link. The protocol is significantly different.