[c-nsp] ASR 920 Strange SFP behavior

[Shawn L]

I have a group of 5 Cisco ASR-920-12SZ switches / routers that are all
exhibiting some strange behavior with respect to ports and SFPs.  This is
the new 12 port 10 gig device that just came out relatively recently.  I
also have some of the 920-12CZ and 4CZ that aren't having the issue.  Just
wondering if anyone else has seen this before or has any ideas.

All the routers are running the same firmware -- 16.9.4.  I can take a
working SFP out of one switch (doesn't matter if it's Cisco branded or not)
and insert it in another, and it doesn't get recognized.  The port
sometimes comes up, but doesn't pass traffic.  The SFP is sometimes
recognized, sometimes recognized incorrectly (ie type is correct, speed is
wrong).

If I take that same SFP and put it back in the 'first' switch, it gets
recognized and comes right up.  When the SFP is unrecognized, or
"partially" recognized the list of available commands for the interface
also changes.  IE 'negotiation auto / no negotiate auto" is sometimes
available, at other times it's an unrecognized command.  I'm guessing that
whether the commands are available or not depend on what it thinks the SFP
supports.

Tried adding the 'transceiver permit pid all', but it didn't help.  The
cisco switch commands for unsupported transceivers (service
unsupported-transceiver/no errdisable detect cause gbic-invalid) don't
appear to be accepted.  I wonder if there's a different set of commands for
this platform.

At first (after confirming that I wasn't crazy) we thought it might be an
issue with licensing.... The licensing on them is rather strange.

"If no pluggable is present in the router at bootup, then any six ports can
be used as default licenses (6x10G + 6x1G = 66G). However, if 10G
pluggables are present in all the ports of router at bootup, then the first
six port are marked for default licenses. The remaining ports can be used
as licensed ports."

But after checking, we have the same licenses on all of the boxes.  We've
opened a TAC case about the issue, but haven't really gotten anywhere with
it as of yet.

Shawn