A direct attach cable (DAC) assembly is a high performance integrated duplex data link for bi-directional communication. The cable is compliant with the IPF MSA for mechanical form factor and SFP+ MSA for direct attach cables. The cable, is data-rate agnostic. Supporting speeds in excess of 10 Gbps, it is a cost-effective alternative to optical links. The transceiver with DAC is hot-swappable. You can insert and remove the transceiver with the attached cable without shutting down the appliance. The Citrix NetScaler appliance supports only passive DAC.