[c-nsp] Cisco and third party transceivers

Martin T m4rtntns at gmail.com
Thu Sep 29 19:39:51 EDT 2011


Jason,
I agree that preferring Cisco branded SFP's gives a sort of quality
guarantee. According to a friend of mine, those SFP's were bought from
a electronics market in Moscow:

http://img.nag.ru/images/18388/101019342.gif
http://img.nag.ru/images/18388/138043329.jpeg
http://img.nag.ru/images/18640/2112514702.jpg
http://img.nag.ru/images/18640/2054988461.jpeg

..but manufactured in Asia. On the other hand, there are manufacturers
like Finisar, Prolabs, Agilent etc, which make decent transceivers as
much as I have experience. In addition, according to this article:
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=102950 ..Cisco buys
SFP directly from Finisar. Do you see a difference in "Cisco branded
Finisar SFP" and "Finisar SFP" other than content of EEPROM?


Mikael,
what do you mean by "non-cisco coded optics"? Take a look at following example:

<<<<<
WS-C3750G-12S#show idprom interface GigabitEthernet 1/0/1

General SFP Information
-----------------------------------------------
Identifier            :   0x03
Connector             :   0x07
Transceiver           :   0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
Encoding              :   0x01
BR_Nominal            :   0x0D
Vendor Name           :   OEM
Vendor Part Number    :   SFP-CWDM-2120-47
Vendor Revision       :   0x31 0x31 0x2E 0x30
Vendor Serial Number  :   N87R3121
-----------------------------------------------

Other Information
-------------------------------------------------------
Port asic num         : 02
Port asic port num    : 02
SFP presence index    : 00
SFP iter cnt          : 323752258
SFP failed oper flag  : 0x00000000
IIC error cnt         : 0
IIC error dsb cnt     : 0
IIC max sts cnt       : 4
Chk for link status   : 01
Link status           : 01
Autoneg enable        : 01
Flow control Pause    : 00
Flow control asymPause: 00
Duplex mode           : 00
PcsInfo               : 0x05FDEBE0
MacInfo               : 0x05FDEBC8 0x05FDEBC0
AutoNeg               : 0x05FDEBC0 0x05FDEBC8

Sfp selection asic reg map
--------------------------------
stbi                 : 0x00
tbi                  : 0x00
sfpControl           : 0x15
sfpStatus0           : 0xC0
sfpStatus1           : 0x00
Regs Loc             : 0xF0000000
--------------------------------
SFF-8472 MSA EEPROM Data
===========================================
000 :  03 04 07 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
010 :  00 01 0D 00 78 FF 00 00 00 00
020 :  4F 45 4D 20 20 20 20 20 20 20
030 :  20 20 20 20 20 20 00 20 20 20
040 :  53 46 50 2D 43 57 44 4D 2D 32
050 :  31 32 30 2D 34 37 31 31 2E 30
060 :  05 BE 20 E2 20 20 20 20 4E 38
070 :  37 51 33 31 30 34 20 20 20 20
080 :  20 20 20 20 31 30 30 34 30 31
090 :  20 20 58 80 01 95 01 00 11 80
100 :  63 BE 0B 0B 3F 60 94 D7 71 7D
110 :  C9 3C CD 04 4C 00 00 00 00 00
120 :  00 00 00 00 09 21 04 EC

SFF-8472 Digital Diagnostic Monitoring Data
===========================================
000 :    64 00 D8 00 5F 00 DD 00 89 EE
010 :    72 F1 86 1A 76 C6 09 78 01 50
020 :    0A 32 01 2A 07 A0 00 C3 06 0E
030 :    00 F6 8B 6E 00 21 AF 86 00 27
040 :    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
050 :    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
060 :    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 3E 0F
070 :    D2 7D BF BB A9 AF 0D 69 00 00
080 :    10 34 00 00 01 00 00 00 01 05
090 :    00 00 00 00 00 80 33 E0 7F 90
100 :    03 36 04 48 01 76 00 00 00 00
110 :    00 F8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
120 :    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
YETI INTERNAL REGS
-----------------------------------------------
Location=0xD8000500     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD8000501     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD8000502     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD8000503     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD8000504     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD8000505     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD8000506     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD8000507     :  Value=0x02
Location=0xD8000508     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD8000509     :  Value=0x40
Location=0xD800050A     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD800050B     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD800050C     :  Value=0x05
Location=0xD800050D     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD800050E     :  Value=0x01
Location=0xD800050F     :  Value=0x00
Location=0xD8000510     :  Value=0x0F
yetiIICinited           :  Value=0x00000001
yetiIICLockPassCnt      :  Value=0
yetiIICLockFailCnt      :  Value=0
yetiIICLockApp          :  Value=35
-----------------------------------------------


-------------------------------------------------------

WS-C3750G-12S#show interfaces Gi1/0/1 transceiver
ITU Channel not available (Wavelength not available),
Transceiver is externally calibrated.
If device is externally calibrated, only calibrated values are printed.
++ : high alarm, +  : high warning, -  : low warning, -- : low alarm.
NA or N/A: not applicable, Tx: transmit, Rx: receive.
mA: milliamperes, dBm: decibels (milliwatts).

                                 Optical   Optical
           Temperature  Voltage  Tx Power  Rx Power
Port       (Celsius)    (Volts)  (dBm)     (dBm)
---------  -----------  -------  --------  --------
Gi1/0/1      52.1       3.32       2.4     -23.0

WS-C3750G-12S#
>>>>>

It's a third-party SFP directly from China. As much as I understand,
it doesn't have any sort of Cisco-branding, does it? Regardless it
supports DDM.


In addition, in the past, has there been times where one really was
forced to use transceivers with Cisco serials because there were no
"service unsupported-transceiver" and "no errdisable detect cause
gbic-invalid" commands? Maybe some seasoned network engineer
remembers..


regards,
martin


2011/9/28 Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike at swm.pp.se>:
> On Tue, 27 Sep 2011, Martin T wrote:
>
>> However, why is such service needed at nowadays for Cisco equipment?
>
> Because Cisco do not activate DOM (Digital Optical Monitoring) on non-cisco
> coded optics.
>
> It's also nice to be able to get things working out of the box and not have
> the remote hands engineer have to configure things to get the optics
> running.
>
> --
> Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se
>



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