Popular discussions about programming, compatibility and testing of optical transceivers.
My fibre WAN runs into a Turris Omnia and I moved from the ISP box to an XPON stick to drop one hop. The stick is a 2.5G part, the Omnia cage does 2.5G, and everything still lands at 1G. Turris Omnia, Turris OS 7.0.2 HBS, kernel 5.15.148 Luleey LL-XS2510 XPON SFP, RTL960x based, DFP-34X-2C2 family…
On an inexpensive firewall appliance (Intel Atom C3758R, six 1GbE igc ports and two SFP+ cages wired to the CPU) OPNsense showed four ix interfaces instead of two and the SFP+ ports stayed red/down with a copper SFP+ RJ45 module, although the link LEDs lit. ifconfig -v identified ix0/ix1 as the…
Small home lab. I flashed a Linksys LGS328C over to OpenWrt SNAPSHOT to get away from the stock web interface. Everything survived the move except one SFP28 port that used to work perfectly well. switch: Linksys LGS328C (Realtek rtl930x), OpenWrt SNAPSHOT module: Dell S28-10G-25G-SR-85C, dual-rate…
Setting up 10G between a server and a TP-Link switch, nothing exotic. The card shows up in the system, driver loads normally, but there's no link on the port at all - no errors, no negotiation attempts. server: Intel X710, four 10GbE SFP+ ports, firmware 9.140.76856 TP-Link switch, SFP+ port cable…
Commissioning a 10G handoff for a customer on a 3930 that was already on site. The module is Ciena's own, pulled from our stock, and the port does come up - but the operational state is UCTF instead of Ena and the uncertified transceiver alarm sits there permanently. The acceptance test includes a…
Running a small virtualization setup: two Proxmox 6 nodes and a target on FreeNAS 11.2. While the HBAs were connected to the target directly, everything ran for months without a single error. Put a used Brocade 200e between them to avoid crossing cables, and that's when it started. two Proxmox 6…
Second hand HPE 5130 for the rack at home, and it arrived with four HPE JD092B X130 10G SFP+ SR modules in the box. I bought new OM4 LC patch cords, wired one SFP+ port to the 10G card in the server, and got absolutely nothing. HPE FlexNetwork 5130 24G PoE+ 4SFP+ EI (JG936A) 4x HPE JD092B X130 10G…
A Raspberry Pi tool for SFP/SFP+ EEPROM: -r prints connector, transceiver spec, wavelength, vendor, part, serial, date and checksums; -d dumps the whole EEPROM; -c recaculates checksums and offers to write the correct value; -m reads DOM sensors (temperature, voltage, bias, power). A vendor variant…
I am wiring per-port optical telemetry into monitoring for a couple of Nexus 9000 fabrics. Collection runs through NAPALM, and the getter I lean on is getoptics(). Nexus 9000 leaf and spine pairs QSFP-100G-CWDM4 modules on the fabric links NAPALM with the nxosssh driver, SSH transport, no NX-API…
We run a small regional network and pulled a spare 7050T out of stock to use as a DWDM aggregation box. Arista-coded DWDM optics for it quote close to the price of the switch, so we bought third-party DWDM SFP+ instead, and now the switch will not talk to them. Arista 7050T, EOS 4.10.6 generic…
Homelab, nothing exotic. An Odroid H2 does routing duty on its 2.5GbE ports, and I wanted to hang it off one of the 10GbE SFP+ cages of the switch through an RJ45 copper module instead of pulling fibre across the room. QNAP QSW-M408S, copper module in one of the 10GbE SFP+ cages Odroid H2 router…
Field turn-up work on SDH circuits, and the tester has been fighting me on the optical side lately. Same kit that has been fine for years, so before I book a service call I want a sanity check on the order I should be working through. Viavi T-BERD/MTS-5800 with the SFP port populated, generic…
Intel-branded servers witth a built-in ConnectX-3 (MT27500, ConnectX3-A1-WSP-QDR, firmware 2.36.5000, mlx4en 4.6, kernel 4.19.68) lost link when a QSFP-to-SFP+ adapter with an SFP+ transceiver replaced direct QSFP cabling: ethtool reported Link detected: no and speed Unknown!, port in ETH moe. The…
My firewall is a Supermicro E300-9A running pfSense Plus 22.05, and both 10G SFP+ ports refuse to come up. Neither ix2 nor ix3 ever shows carrier, whatever I put in the cage. Hardware: Supermicro E300-9A, pfSense Plus 22.05 Ubiquiti DAC-SFP10-0.5M and a 10Gtek passive twinax cable Supermicro…
A used IBM Emulex dual-port 10GbE SFP+ PCIe card (bent bracket, loose heatsink) made both TrueNAS Core and a Windows 10 PC hang for a long time during boot; the switch showed a link but neither OS saw the interface as active. Hardware involved: IBM Emulex dual-port 10GbE SFP+, Chelsio NICs, Intel…
I inherited a Sun Network 10GbE Switch 72p with a couple of legacy boxes hanging off it that will never do more than a gigabit. The plan was to drop a 1G capable module into one of the SFP+ cages and be done with it. Sun Network 10GbE Switch 72p, SEFOS CLI over the serial console x2129a dual-rate…
I run a small Proxmox box at home and wanted a proper 10G path to the storage node, so I dropped in a used Supermicro AOC-STGN-i1S. It is the plain Intel 82599 design, board marked E157872, and I assumed this would be the boring part of the build. It is not. Supermicro AOC-STGN-i1S, Intel X520-DA1…
Our inventory tooling walks every switch and records vendor, part number and serial for each pluggable straight out of the SONiC CLI. It works everywhere except one batch of QSFP-DD modules, where the identity fields come back mangled and the asset database fills up with junk. Switch: SONiC…
Small office rack: there is a 40G card in the file server and a switch with spare uplink ports, so instead of buying another box I tried to hang the server straight off the switch. Both ends see the cable, the link never comes up. Huawei S6730-H24X6C, QSFP28 uplink ports QNAP LAN-40G2SF-MLX in the…
Two Flex System enclosures, each with an EN4093R 10Gb Scalable Switch (option 49Y4270) as the network module. Ports come back error-disabled after a chassis power event, and less often drop into the same state while everything is running. It is not always the same ports, which is what makes this so…
The poster wanted to flash four TRW-1310-1.25C-3 and TRW-1550-1.25C-3 SFP modules to work with an HP v1910-24G (JE006A) and asked about a programmer. The difficulty was finding the right firmware and matching serial numbers within one switch while keeping checksums valid. Hardware involved: HP…
Building a storage box at home and picked up a dual 10GbE Solarflare SFN7122F (SFC9120) because it was cheap. The card itself looks healthy, the system sees it and both ports enumerate, but not one of my existing multimode SFP+ modules will bring up a link in it. Solarflare SFN7122F, dual port…
On a CRS226-24G-S2+RM (RouterOS 6.42.11 long-term) the SFP+ port stayed at no link, not running, slave after a power loss, while software reboots were fine; disabling and re-enabling the interface fixed it manually. The problematic module was a Huawei MA5671A GPON SFP, other SFPs behaved, and the…
I run a provider's network with a mixed fleet of modules, so I regularly have to prep modules for specific switches. I want to finally understand the mechanics of the check instead of guessing at dumps. What I'm working with: Cisco Catalyst 2960X-24PS-L, the pickiest one in the fleet QTECH…
We run a handful of 80 km DWDM spans off EX4200s with third-party optics on both ends, because the vendor-branded DWDM parts were never going to fit the budget. That was fine for years. After the EX boxes were moved to Junos 12.3 the optics still sit in the same ports and the spans still exist, but…
I run a Turris Omnia NG at home and the last thing sitting on the metallic WAN port is a two metre hop to the ISP router. I would like to move that hop into the SFP+ cage and free the copper port for the lab side. The official Turris SFP+ copper module (RTROM01-RTSF-10G) costs about what a small…
Bench work: re-coding a small batch of SFP+ modules so they carry the vendor string and part number the customer's kit expects. The edit itself is trivial in a hex editor, the write goes through, the read back matches byte for byte what I wrote - and the host still throws the module out. generic…
The poster wanted to use a MikroTik XS+DA0001 passive DAC between the 1G SFP port of an RB3011 and an SFP+ port of a CRS309 and asked whether a passive cable can bridge different SFP generations. The RB3011 SFP cage is 1G only while the CRS309 cage is SFP+ (10G), and a passive DAC has no active…
We pick up a 1GE carrier handoff on a Ciena 3930 and I am putting together a spares kit for it. The module quoted for that circuit is XCVR-A10Y31, a 1000BASE-LX/LC part: 1310 nm, 10 km single mode. Nothing exotic about it, and I have a drawer of generic optics with exactly that specification…
Replacing a customer's incumbent aggregation pair with CloudEngine kit, and the single link that refuses to come up is the 100GE feed into their packet broker. Everything else on the switch went in without drama. Huawei CloudEngine 6800, 100GE port 100GBASE-SR4 QSFP28 modules, Huawei parts, one at…
Reverse-engineering notes on the SFP Wizard: it reads a module's part number (page A0h bytes 40-55), looks it up in an embedded password database and sends the matching unlock password, falling back to brute force when unmatched. It traces the firmware evolution: v1.0.5 tried only the first…
A FortiGate 500E displayed the message This port is using a third-party transceiver on an SFP+ port; the poster asked whta it meant and which SFP+ specification to use. There were no errors or link problems, only the log line, so the real question was whether it signals a fault, degrades support…
Bringing up a pair of GPU boxes against our existing 400G fabric, and I have already managed to buy the wrong cable once, so I would rather get the theory straight before ordering again. NIC: ConnectX-7 MCX715105AS-WEAT, single 400G port, OSFP cage Switch: 400G QSFP-DD ports In hand: a passive 400G…
We run a couple of IBM Power boxes next to a small SAN, and I am trying to write down a sane spares policy before the next hardware maintenance renewal. The part I cannot pin down is the transceiver itself: on some adapters it looks like a field-replaceable part in its own right, on others a…
We run a pair of ThinkSystem NE1032 RackSwitch units as top of rack in a small colo cage. The Lenovo-branded optics we inherited only cover half the ports, so the rest got filled with generic SFP+ modules and a couple of short DACs out of the same batch we already use on other vendors' switches…
I picked up a couple of second-hand Arista switches for the lab and ran straight into the optics gate. Arista-coded modules link up, passive DAC cables link up, and anything third-party leaves the port down. The lab side: DCS-7150S-24, bought used, no support contract and no account team behind me…
After upgrading a CRS305-1G-4S+ to SwOS 2.12, SFP-GE-T 1000BASE-T copper SFPs stopped linking although the switch still identified them in the SFP tab; the same modules kept working on a CRS317-1G-16S+ with the same firmware. Modules inserted before the upgrade continued to work, modules inserted…
A set of bash scripts using i2c-tools to modify SFP module EEPROM. Hardware is an STM32 configured as a USB-I2C adapter (or a Raspberry Pi / mainboard SMBus) with a Cisco Twingig adapter as the SFP breakout. It handles the default Cisco Finisar module password 0x00000000 and recalculates checksums…
A user with a MikroTik GPON ONU SFP module in a RouterBOARD facing a FiberLink OLT saw the interface as registered but the module serial never appeared in the OLT for provisioning. The thread turned into a reliability report: an operator lost every deployed MikroTik GPON module within two months of…
We are bringing up a pair of AS9716-32D as a 400G spine in the lab, on a community SONiC image with the PDDF platform layer. The optics are not the problem, the peer links fine, but everything the switch says about them is wrong. Edgecore AS9716-32D (x8664-acctonas971632d-r0) community SONiC build…
I look after a small office network, one switch closet, and the four SFP+ cages on our access switch carry the 10G links to the server rack. It ran for months without a thought and now one cage is simply gone. TP-Link TL-SG3428X-M2 (V1), firmware 1.20.4 Build 20241104 Rel.40746, adopted in Omada…
Two SRX1500 sit in separate data centres a few kilometres apart, joined by dark fiber pairs we own end to end. They have to come up as a chassis cluster, which means the control link has to cross that fiber instead of a patch cord inside one rack. The setup: two Juniper SRX1500, identical hardware…
We have a dark fibre span of roughly 80 km where the owner will lease us exactly one strand - a second core is either not there or priced like a small building. Both ends terminate on chassis with XFP cages, and the service on top of it has to be 10 GbE. So what I need is a single-fibre BiDi XFP…
I am replacing the operator ONT with an SFP GPON stick on the Linux box that terminates our WAN, and the stick behaves nothing like a transceiver. Push it in and the cage stays silent for half a minute or more, long enough that I twice assumed the module was dead, and when the kernel finaally does…
Joining two campus buildings into one network. In building A there's an Avaya VSP 4400, and only 1G SFP ports are free there: the dedicated uplinks have long been taken for other purposes. In building B there's an Extreme Summit X690-48x-2q-4c, and there only 10G SFP+ ports are free, no other…
We run a pair of racks that hand off to a carrier-facing Cisco NCS, and one of the 100G server uplinks has never come up since the build. Same result after moving the server to another cabinet with a different patch panel, so I have stopped treating it as a one-off. Supermicro server…
Small office, two buildings, and all I want is a plaain 1000M fibre link between the racks. Both ends are configured for 1000M, both stay dark, and this has been dragging on for weeks now. TP-Link TL-SG3452P, hardware V3, firmware 3.20.4, link taken from one of its SFP cages PLANET IGS-6329-8UP2S4…
A short no-name DAC between a UDM SE and a Minisforum MS-01 had worked for months; a new 30 m Ubiquiti UACC-AOC-SFP10-30M active optical cable was recognised by the UDM SE (vendor, part, serial, temperrature, power visible) but no link came up and the SFP port log showed an SFP EEPROM error; on…
The poster wanted to connect a UDM SE (10G SFP+) to an Enterprise XG 24 switch (25G SFP28) and asked whether an SFP+ DAC would work with the SFP28 port falling back to 10G, or whether an SFP28 DAC was preferable. The concern was whether the SFP28 cage would fall back to 10G with an ordinary SFP+…
A Meraki MX95's WAN2 SFP would not link to an upstream Extreme switch, while the same SFP and patch linked to a Netgear switch, which in turn linked to the Extreme. The same happened with an MX85 against an AT&T-provided Ciena device. Cisco-certified and Extreme-certified SFPs were tried in all…
