[c-nsp] Cheap 10G between 7600 and Procurve 5406zl

[Christopher.Marget at usc-bt.com]

> > These days you can get cheap twinax 10G cables with SFP+ at the ends
> to
> > connect two Cisco switches or two Procurves. Short distance only of
> > course, but very cheap.

They're also useful for connecting servers to top-of-rack 10G switches.

But curiously, they're currently unsupported by Cisco on the Nexus 7000 platform:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9402/ps9512/Data_Sheet_C78-437757.html

They seem to work fine in this application, however.

> > I would like to connect a Procurve 5406zl which has a SFP+ port to
> one
> > of the 10Gbps ports on a Cisco 7600 RSP720-3CXL-10GE.

> As far as I'm aware, HP are particularly crappy about vendor locking
> their
> transceiver ports and will refuse to drive any "third party"
> transceiver.

There's no problem using a Cisco SFP+ cable in an HP *server*

> > Also, twinax SFP+ are manufacturer-specific. Is it possible to get a
> > twinax-cable with a Cisco-coded SFP+ at one end and a Procurve-coded
> > SFP+ at the other?

This might not be necessary.  Network World recently did a 10G switch review:
http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2010/011810-ethernet-switch-test.html

One of the documents linked from the review was the vendor features questionnaire.  In it, Cisco said:

     Nexus 5000 also provides interoperability support for non-Cisco
     Twinax cabling.  Supported vendors include EMC, IBM, HP StorageWorks
     and NetApp

This, and an emailed promise from an HP rep are the only inter-vendor twinax support claims I've seen to date.  I'm hopeful that vendors will come to their senses on pluggables, at least for twinax cabling.