Popular discussions about programming, compatibility and testing of optical transceivers.
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…
