[c-nsp] Third party optics

[garry at mlfwd.de]

On 07.09.2021 20:04, harbor235 wrote:
> How are your organizations dealing with Cisco equipment and usage of third
> party optics?
>                           1) Cisco or "third party"?
>                            2) Cisco policy regarding third party components?
Third party only ... we use programmable optics, which we can flash
ourselves ... saves a lot on inventory, as we can always change to
Juniper (which typically don't care about the programming) or any other
vendor in case a customer needs something on short notice ...
> Is it worth the risk?

Risk? Not really any risk there ... in 20+ years of using third party
optics/SFPs, we've never had an issue with any ... only situation, as
others have stated, could be when opening a ticket with TAC and the
optics aren't reported as Cisco ...

Weird side note: we bought some originally Cisco DAC cables for a
customer w/ Nexus 5k5/2k2 switches ... while the optics were 3rd party
and identified by the system as original Cisco, the original Cisco DACs
are reported as being non-Cisco ... those cables were from our regular
Cisco distributor, I highly doubt they delivered fake 3rd party cables
... (also, they've been working now for 8+ years, so either way, no
complaint here ...)

-garry