Pluggable transceivers have, due to their flexibility, widely replaced fixed network interfaces. Soldered chopper as well as optical units have have been substituted by small MSA standardized cages.

Having the Small-Formfactor-Pluggable (SFP) superseding the the older GBIC made it finally possible to circumvent limitations in size and amount of supported applications while still offering a pluggable connection style. The biggest visible improvement is the size reduction of approximately 50% which is why SFPs are also known under the name Mini-GBIC.

Like for most developments in the pluggable transceiver realm the driving forces behind the XFP specification were the demands for smaller size and a wider range of uses. That's why the complex XAUI interface has been replaced by a single serial 10Gb/s channel. This simplification allowed a remarkable decrease in size.

The GigaBit-Interface-Converter (GBIC) was designed at the end of the 90s. Originally it was used for storage systems, but it established fast as the standard interface for fibre channel switches.