[c-nsp] Non Cisco SFP

[Gert Doering]

Hi,

On Mon, Feb 02, 2015 at 04:46:30PM +0000, Warren Jackson wrote:
> 1)  Lack of Cisco support.  You will find yourself behind the eight-ball
> dealing with the TAC if you have these in your chassis.  Sounds like a
> small deal, but I for one don't have the time to deal with it.

It will only be a deal if you have issues with that particular interface
(like, "link not coming up" or "errors" or stuff like that).

Our typical dealing with TAC is (besides "have you upgraded and rebooted?")
more general software issues, or clear hardware brokenness, like "oh,
we rebooted our 6500 and lost one 6708 module due to memory going bad",
and 3rd-party transceivers have never been an issue.

> 2)  Cost.  If you buy through a Cisco gold provider then you are going to
> get a good price on the optics, enough to where the difference pays off in
> support, as these can been wrapped in through your smartnet converage.  If
> you have optics from another vendor you are dealing with their support and
> Cisco support, keeps things simple. Makes it worth paying the bit extra you
> would pay.  We aren't talking about thousands of dollars difference in
> price here.

Oh, we *are* (talking about "thousands of dollars", that is).  

The supplier we're currently ordering 10G optics from takes about 70 EUR 
(+VAT) for a SR SFP+ and about 100 EUR for a LR SFP+, delivery usually on 
the next day (Cisco partners over here tend to take a week or longer to 
actually make an offer in the first place).

I'm not sure what is charged for a Cisco SFP+ these days, but last time
I looked, the 4 SFP+ that go into an ASR9001 would easily save 1000 EUR
or more...

> 3)  Who?  Which SFP manufacturer(s) would you recommend besides Cisco?

Who do you guess makes "Cisco" SFPs?  It's all the same production lines,
like Finisair etc. - and guess what, they sell the same modules to other
parties as well, just not with a Cisco stamp on it.

> 4)  Several of the Cisco SFP's provide the show tranceiver telemetry that
> aid in troubeshooting the physical layer, which you won't get with the
> off-market brand tranceivers.

Tell the one you buy the SFPs from that you want DOM support, receive
SFPs that have DOM support (and might be 5 EUR more expensive a piece).

Of course, if you actually have a *Cisco* box that supports DOM in the
first place, which is spotty enough.

gert
-- 
USENET is *not* the non-clickable part of WWW!
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Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert at greenie.muc.de
fax: +49-89-35655025                        gert at net.informatik.tu-muenchen.de
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