Popular discussions about programming, compatibility and testing of optical transceivers.
On an HPE 5510 24G SFP 4SFP+ HI (JH149A, Comware 7.1.045 R1111P01) genuine JD119B and JD118B 1G SFPs were accepted at first (OPTMOD/4/MODULEIN: The transceiver is 1000BASESXSFP), but after a cold power reboot the same modules were reported as UNKNOWNSFPPLUS with OPTMOD/5/CHKSUMERR: Transceiver…
A FlexFabric 5900AF running Comware 7.1.035 R2208P01 reported a third-party transceiver as not supported when inserted, while the same class of modules worked in a FlexFabric 7904 on 7.1.045. The poster asked whether support could be enabled by command and whether the Comware version mattered…
An HPE 2920 (J9729A, firmware WB.15.17.0009) with the J9731A 10G expansion module was connected to a DL380 Gen8 with a 560SFP+ NIC using a genuine HPE X242 3 m SFP+ DAC (J9283B). Port A1 with a J9150A SR module worked, but port A2 with the DAC logged Transceiver type not supported in this port and…
The poster wanted to connect Aruba 2540 switches (JL357A, firmware YC.16.09.0001) to Cisco Catalyst 9300 switches using Cisco SFP-H10GB-CU3M DACs. After enabling allow-unsupported-transceiver the cables were still not recognised: show tech transceivers listed the port as unsupported, the LED…
The poster tried a Mellanox MFA2P10-Axxx 25G SFP28 AOC between a MikroTik switch and a Supermicro server with an Intel X722 (ixl driver) under pfSense. The cable linked fine switch-to-switch but on the X722 ifconfig -vvvm showed the module recognised (10GBase-SFI, 1000Base-KX listed) yet no carrier…
The poster needed to connect stacked Aruba 6300F (JL665A) switches to a 6300M core (JL658A) at 10 Gbps over more than 3 m. J9283D 3 m DACs worked for short runs and the older 3810/2930 platforms supported a 7 m J9285D cable, but that cable is not listed for the 6300. The question was whether the 5…
A 2920-48G-PoE+ (J9729A) rejected a J9283B 3 m SFP+ DAC with 00536 FFI: port 45 Transceiver type not supported in this port even though HP lists the cable as compatible; the same cable worked in a 2530 with SFP+ slots. Firmware had been updated without effect. A later reader noticed an old J9283B…
Even with allow-unsupported-transceiver enabled, HPE Aruba 3810M and 2930M switches showed an amber fault for generic SFP+ modules, including ones recoded to masquerade as a J9151A. The author traced the behaviour to HPE's HPIDv2 challenge-response authentication: the module EEPROM carries a flag…
Four HP ProCurve 6120XG blade switches (516733-B21) refused J9150A 10G SR SFP+ transceivers that the datasheet lists as supported; show tech transceivers reported them as unsupported. The switches ran Z.14.56. The poster asked whether a firmware upgrade or a configuration setting was needed…
H3C-SFP-10G-T-SO 10GBASE-T copper modules (from FS or Solid Optics) worked out of the box in a FlexFabric 5940 (JH398A) with the JH181A 24-port SFP+ card, but in a FlexFabric 5945 (JQ076A) with the same card the ports only came up after manually running port up-mode on the interface. The poster…
A FreeNAS box with on-board Intel X552 SFP+ ports (Xeon D) and an ESXi 6.7 host with a Mellanox ConnectX-3 (MT27500, Dell Y3KKR) were cabled with two Mellanox MCP2104-X003B passive DACs from 2014. Looping each device to itself brought the ports up, but between the two systems ESXi showed…
The poster needed to connect a MikroTik CRS328-4C-20S-4S+RM to an HP 1820-24G-PoE+ over 200-500 m of outdoor aerial fibre and asked which SFP modules to buy and how to verify compatibility before purchase. The HP compatibility table listed only J4859C as a single-mode SFP, while MikroTik offered…
The poster planned a server with an Intel X710-DA2 dual-port SFP+ NIC connected to two Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch 48 Lite units, with LACP between the switches. Six 10G SFP+ modules were needed (two for the server side, four for the switches) and the question was which modules would be recognised by both…
The poster configured new HP 2530-48G switches (J9281B) with J9775A SFP+ direct-attach cables bought as accessories. The ports stayed down and the log said FFI: port 49 Transceiver type not supported in this port; show tech transceivers first showed nothing and, after upgrading from YA.15.12.0007…
The poster operated old HP/H3C A5800 switches (JC100A, JC103A) with many SFP modules of mixed coding. Modules with H3C in A0h bytes 60h-62h worked but logged This is not a supported transceiver for this platform, and DDM plus serial/date information were unavailable. Copying the full data from a…
The poster had an Integra Optics tunable DWDM SFP+ (1528.77-1566.72 nm, 96 channels, 80 km, 10G, sold as Calix/Arista compatible) in an Arista switch. Changing the frequency and configuring the ITU channel through the Arista CLI had no effect: the module kept reporting the same wavelength. The…
A customer saw errors on a fibre link and suspected a speed mismatch with a 1G far end. The poster asked whether 10G SFP+ transceivers are backward compatible with 1G, or whether the modules had to be swapped for 1G SFPs to talk to the gigabit device on the other side. Hardware involved: Aruba…
With an Aruba 2930F connected to a server through a Stornet-branded J9283D-SN passive 3 m SFP+ DAC, port 50 dropped the link immediately after it came up and port 52 flapped with the log message FFI : Port: 52 Excessive link state transitions. The same cable worked on ports 49 and 51, and fibre…
The poster had an existing multimode fibre run of about 200 m that could not be replaced and only single-mode SFP modules available. The question was whether a 1G single-mode SFP pair would establish a stable link over multimode fibre, and what the practical limits were. The thread also raised the…
A brand-new retail Intel E810-XXVDA2 on Windows Server 2022 (Intel driver 1.12.164.0 from release package 28) was connected to an SFP28 port of a Ubiquiti USW-Pro-Aggregation switch. With an SFP28 DAC the link came up at 25G immediately, but with SFP28 optical transceivers (Ubiquiti…
The poster wanted a cheap 10G link between servers with Intel X520-DA2 NICs and an HP switch and worried that a direct-attach cable is coded either for Intel or for HP but not both. A respondent shared that two X520-DA2 cards would not link directly over a DAC in their case, but a Dell DAC…
On Aruba 2930F switches (JL255A) the poster installed new J9151E 10G SFP+ transceivers (part 1990-4727) that the transceiver guide lists as supported, but every unit was reported as Unsupported Transceiver (SelfTest Err#128000) and show tech transceivers showed ?? for type and serial. J9281D DACs…
An HP 5900AF-48XG-4QSFP+ (Comware 7.1.045 R2311P01) logged OPTMOD/4/PHONYMODULE: This is not a supported transceiver for this platform for two 10G SR SFP+ modules; display transceiver interface identified them as Avago and JDSU 10GBASESRSFP with DDM. The poster wanted to know which SFP+ to buy and…
The poster connects a Cisco Catalyst C9300X-24Y to a FortiGate firewall with a 25G SFP-H25G-CU2M DAC. Whenever the DAC is inserted the switch logs '%PLATFORMPM-6-MODULEINSERTED: SFP module inserted with interface name Twe1/0/23' followed by '%PLATFORMPM-6-DIFFERENTMODULEINSERTED: Warning: SFP…
The poster tried to link an HPE FlexFabric 5900AF and a Dell S5212F-ON at 10 Gbps with DAC cables that had been custom-made with an HPE-coded end and a Dell-coded end. Both ports were forced to 10G full duplex, but no link came up. On the HPE side the interface reported Media type is stack wire…
Two service providers shared a fibre with CWDM multiplexers. The existing 1310 nm channel worked, but after adding a 1471 nm channel the transmitting side saw frames leave (confirmed with packet captures) while the far end received nothing, even though light levels looked normal. The provider had…
On an IOS XR router (RSP-based ASR 9000 class, observed on IOS XR 4.x and 5.x), the poster configured a tunable DWDM XFP with 'controller dwdm 0/1/0/0', 'admin-state maintenance', 'wavelength 55', 'admin-state in-service' and then brought the TenGigE interface up. The running configuration shows…
The poster compiled and loaded i40e 3.4.2 on Ubuntu 16.04 for an Intel XL710-QDA2 dual-port 40GbE adapter. The driver loaded fine, but as soon as non-Intel QSFP+ cables were attached dmesg reported "Rx/Tx is disabled on this device because an unsupported SFP+ module type was detected." and no link…
The poster was building a server that needed a 1 Gbps single-mode fibre uplink and wanted a PCIe card with two to four SFP cages so any optic could be used later. The core doubt: switches usually accept plain 1G SFP optics in SFP+ ports, but is the same true for 10GbE server NICs, or would the NIC…
On an Arista 7050QX running EOS 4.14 the poster tried to use third-party QSFP+ DAC cables; the ports went to errdisable as unqualified transceivers. They patched the XcvrAgent.py agent under /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages to skip the manufacturer check, which cleared the errdisable state but left…