[c-nsp] ASR-1K and 3rd party sfps

[Charles Sprickman]

Hello,

I've been banging my head against this all day.

We have an ASR-1002-X that's been living at home until it goes off to the colo on Friday.  I've been trying to learn all the quirks of the platform and get some of the platform-specific stuff done before bringing in the bulk of the config from the router it's replacing.  In the middle of working on the management port/vrf issues, I decided I should verify some behavior by bringing up the sole copper SFP in the unit (gig 0/0/1 in my case).

The SFP is a 3rd party unit supplied from the same vendor (Level4 Hardware) that sold us the router (router and all sfps are new).  It's identified as an "SFP-GE-T" and the vendor's model # is "GLC-T-L4".  No matter what I try, I cannot get a link up.  I suspected at first that it just didn't want to negotiate with a cheap unmanaged GB switch, so I tried with a spare Mikrotik, a laptop, and a server.  I tried all combinations of the following:

-crossover cable, straight cable
-autoneg on/off
-autoneg combined with different speeds/duplex
-speed fixed at 1000/100/10
-duplex fixed half/full

All tested with shut/no shut after each combo, ditto on the other end of the link.

I never got a link on the ASR end (verified in logs), I could get a link light on the other end if I removed the sfp and reinserted it, but that's as close as I got.  "service unsupported-transceiver" gave me the disclaimer, but produced no changes in behavior.

I also tried the SFP in the Mikrotik (has a single SFP port) and it worked fine there.

I found a few threads suggesting the ASRs might be picky about third party copper SFPs, but no detailed info on what works and what doesn't.

One odd thing I noted is that looking at the eprom info, the SFP claims the connector is "LC", which it clearly is not.  

Any tips?  We'll source an actual Cisco if that's a requirement, but I'd love to know for certain what's up or if there's something platform-specific I should be doing that I'm not.

Output of eprom info below.

Thanks,

Charles

l3-1002x#sh hw-module subslot 0/0 transceiver 1 idprom
IDPROM for transceiver GigabitEthernet0/0/1:
 Description                               = SFP or SFP+ optics (type 3)
 Transceiver Type:                         = GE T (26)
 Product Identifier (PID)                  = N/A
 Vendor Revision                           = 11.0
 Serial Number (SN)                        = EC1311041038
 Vendor Name                               = OEM
 Vendor OUI (IEEE company ID)              = 20.20.20 (2105376)
 CLEI code                                 = N/A
 Cisco part number                         = N/A
 Device State                              = Enabled.
 Date code (yy/mm/dd)                      = 13/11/11
 Connector type                            = LC.      <<<<------ ???
 Encoding                                  = 8B10B
                                             NRZ
 Nominal bitrate                           = GE (1300 Mbits/s)
 Minimum bit rate as % of nominal bit rate = not specified
 Maximum bit rate as % of nominal bit rate = not specified


-- 
Charles Sprickman
NetEng/SysAdmin
Bway.net - New York's Best Internet www.bway.net
spork at bway.net - 212.655.9344