[j-nsp] EX to Cat6500 link?

[Ben Dale]

Hi William,

On 01/08/2012, at 11:35 PM, William McLendon <wimclend at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> the link between the EX and the Cat6500 is provided by a 3rd party provider (I think via DWDM - Sienna and Infinera gear).  Both the EX and the Cat6500 GigE interfaces are configured as routed interfaces.
> 
> I don't know enough about how DWDM gear operates, but if I set my side to Auto, while the far-side Cat6500 is fixed 1g/full, I successfully complete auto negotiation and negotiate to gig/full.  I don't know how transparent the transport equipment is, if i'm negotiating with their equipment, or something else . . . anyone have any ideas there?  The provider says they're basically just providing light signal transport, and should be auto negotiating with the far side Cat6500 (which i'm clearly not).
> 
> If the far side (Cat6500) sets his side also to Auto, both sides of the links go down.  If we both hard-set to gig/full, we both show link up, but no connectivity occurs.  We have checked and double checked the interface configs and IP reachability should be occurring.  At this time I still believe its something wrong with the transport equipment / configuration of the circuit, but I don't really have a way to prove it right now.  I was thinking about trying Ethernet OAM LFM, and if that comes up then we at least know L2 is working, and that we've clearly overlooked something on the IP side; and if it does not come up, then to me that points to the transport provider (or some very odd software bug somewhere).

I've not had much to do with Ciena or Infinera, but on gear I'm familiar with auto-negotiation performed between your gear and the local DWDM transponder and is a bit of a dark art.

If it's at all an option, try and get the access interfaces swapper from copper to multimode and be done with it

Cheers,

Ben