[f-nsp] Dying GIG-Ports on jetcore bigirons

[Gillian Canty-Ross]

Those GigE ports are questionable at best.  However, I have found that the
cards with the Finisar GBICs are more reliable than the other branded GBICs
that Foundry used.  This goes for the single/dual GigE uplinks for
ServerIrons as well.

Just an FYI...

-Gilli


On 7/30/06 10:31 AM, "Richard A Steenbergen" <ras at e-gerbil.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 30, 2006 at 03:58:17PM +0200, Gunther Stammwitz wrote:
>> Hello colleagues,
>> 
>>> From time to time Gigabit-Fiber-Ports on our old
>> BI8GMR-Jetcore-Managementmodules are dying. In most cases they're starting
>> to cause crc-errors which can be seen as rx-errors on the devices connected
>> to them. Other ports are completely dead and don't bring up any link at all.
>> 
>> I have heard that this is "normal" because the lasers on those modules are
>> so old and are reaching their end of life. Is there a cheap way to replace
>> them?
>> 
>> What about the B8GMR3-Modules: are they affected too? I'm thinking about
>> replacing the B8GMRs with B8GMR3s because they are cheap on the grey market
>> - but this would only make sense if they're not affected.
> 
> Boy are they ever. I have dozens of B8GMR3 and B8G cards with dead ports
> a-plenty, some with 6 7 or even all 8 ports completely unusable. There is
> a reason those cards are so cheap on the grey market, and that is that no
> one wants to gamble on them. Even if everything checks out today, they can
> start failing one by one tomorrow, and in 6 months you can have a card
> with no working ports.
> 
> Foundry seems to have one of the worst problems in this area by far,
> primarily with certain brands of optics used in early production runs (I
> used to know which, but I've honestly stopped caring). Other versions of
> the same cards can still run forever, but you never know what you're going
> to get. If you really care and you can work a soldering iron, it's cheap
> and easy to replace those 1x9 transceivers, but personally this stopped
> being worth my time compared to buying new systems with 6x the density a
> long time ago. :)
> 
> If you really must keep using (or at least doing new deployments of) those
> things, do yourself a favor and buy cards with modular optics like M4s and
> BxGs for a few bucks more.

-- 
Gillian Canty-Ross                  PH: +1617-680-6492
SubSpace Communications, LLC        http://www.subspacecom.com
AIM: gillicanty                     Skype: gillicanty
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