Popular discussions about programming, compatibility and testing of optical transceivers.
Before deployment the poster asked for a certified or tested SFP28 DAC to connect an HPE FlexFabric 5950 with an SFP28 card to a dual-port Mellanox MCX4121A-ACAT (ConnectX-4 Lx), and for any documentation of that pairing. Hardware involved: HPE FlexFabric 5950, Mellanox MCX4121A-ACAT, SFP28 DAC…
The poster runs a Cisco Nexus 5000 with an N2K-C2232PP-10GE fabric extender. Three FEX-facing ports report 'sfp validation failed' with Cisco FET-10G modules. Following advice found online, the module was removed, the port speed set to 1000 and the module reinserted; the port was also shut/no shut…
A QSFP112 400G SR4 module in a ConnectX-7 (MCX755106AC-HEAT) with an MPO-12 Type-B cable showed module state Ready and data path DPActivated, but mlxlink --showmodule reported State = Disable, Supported Cable Speed = 0x00000000, Compliance = Unspecified/Undefined, Power Class 1.5 W (too low for…
A DS14-MK4 shelf came my way for almost nothing and I would like to hang it off an ordinary tower server as bulk storage at home. It is fully populated with its original carriers, it powers up, fans spin, front panel looks alive - but I cannot get a single disk to appear on the host. NetApp…
After moving a Bell fibre connection from an ER-X to an ER-4 with the ISP's Alcatel-Lucent/Nokia GPON SFP (3FE46541AA / G-010S-P) plugged directly into eth3, the WAN dropped every 3 to 60 minutes; syslog had hundreds of kernel: Failed to read SFP EEPROM1 at byte 0 val -6!! entries and SFP module…
The poster wanted to use a QSFP+ 40G-to-4x10G breakout cable on a two-port Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro (MT27520, firmware 2.42.5044, PSID HP1370110017, MLNX OFED 4.6 on Debian 9.6) so each 10G leg could connect to a different switch, similar to what an Intel XL710 offers. SR-IOV virtual functions had…
A Cisco Nexus 5672UP fitted with a 10GBASE-SR SFP+ could not connect to another switch that uses a 1000BASE-SX (1 Gbps) transceiver; both ends are multimode optics. When the poster changed the port speed, 'show interface brief' displayed an 'SFP checksum error', and swapping the Nexus optic for a 1…
A dual-port ConnectX-5 (MT27800, firmware 16.35.1012, MLNXOFED 5.8 on BC-Linux 8.2) connected to a switch with a DAC would not recover after the cable had been connected and disconnected about fifteen times: the port stayed in State: Polling with Physical state ETHANFSMABILITYDETECT, and mlxlink…
Four HP A5500-HI switches in an IRF stack logged unsupported transceiver messages for six rear-module (JD368B) ports that were cabled with HP J9281B SFP+ DACs to ProLiant Gen8 servers with 530SFP+ NICs. display transceiver interface shwed Transceiver Type STACKSFPPLUS, Connector COPPER, Vendor Name…
Across about forty ProCurve/Aruba switches the poster had used J4858C and J4858D 1G SX SFPs without issues, but eight newly purchased J4858D units logged Unsupported Transceiver on 2530-8G (J9774A, YA.15.16.0006), 2530-8G (J9777A, YA.15.12.0007) and 2530-24G (J9776A, YA.15.10.0003). show tech…
Small office, one leased line, and the carrier terminated it on an ADVA FSP150CP screwed to the wall of the comms cupboard. My job is to get our own router onto that circuit instead of renting one from them, so the ix0 SFP+ port of a Netgate XG-7100 goes straight ino the ADVA access port. Netgate…
We are adding capacity to a small FC fabric and bought compatible 16G short-wave SFP+ from an optics supplier instead of paying the switch vendor price. The switch refuses them. Brocade G610, Fabric OS 9.x generic-coded 16G SWL SFP+, correct wavelength and reach according to the label Brocade-coded…
We are adding a G610 to an existing fabric and there is a box of non-Brocade 16G/32G FC SFP+ left over from another build. Before I plan any ports around them I put one into a spare port on the bench to see what the switch makes of it. Brocade G610, Gen 6 third-party 32G FC SFP+, no Brocade…
Moving a pair of hypervisors onto Fibre Channel storage, and one host refuses to present a single LUN while the very same hardware works when the card is handed to a VM. QLogic QLE2692, ISP2722-based 16/32Gb FC, both ports cabled Fujitsu Eternus DX100 S5 at the other end Proxmox VE 6.2 host…
I run a ZTE ZXA10 C320 at a site, 10G uplink. I check levels and status by hand from the console, but I'd like to bring it all into monitoring so I don't have to jump into the CLI for every subscriber complaint. OLT: ZTE ZXA10 C320 uplink: SFP+ in xgei1/21/1 subscribers on gpon-onu1/1/1:1 and…
A TP-Link T1700G-28TQ (V3, firmware 3.0.0) with a TL-SM311LM module was linked to a Netgear ProSafe GS716T with a SkyLane SFP85P55GE0B989 module. The TP-Link port showed 1000M with a flashing LED while the Netgear port stayed down, and throughput was about 1 Mbps; with a media converter the link…
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…
A Python library to create, read and modify the 256-byte A0h page of SFP EEPROM per SFF-8472. It exposes named fields (vendor, part, serial, wavelength, bit rate, encoding, link lengths, diagnostics options), generates images from scratch or from a binary, and validates/recalculates checkssums. It…
A DGX Spark with a ConnectX-7 NIC was connected to an existing 10G SFP+ optical network through an inexpensive QSFP-to-SFP+ adapter bought on AliExpress; neither DACs nor standard optical modules produced any link. The poster asked whether the setup could work at all and how to configure it…
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…
The poster owned a MikroTik RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT (hAP ac) with a single SFP cage and had two spare 850 nm modules on hand: a Cisco-branded AFBR-57F5PZ-CS1 and an Intel-branded FTLX8571D3BCVIT1. The ISP delivered the service over a single fibre strand rather than a duplex pair, and the posster wanted…
We keep a couple of ONIE boxes in the lab rack for testing, and one of them is an Edgecore AS5114-48X-O-AC-F-EC running dentOS. Port 18 is supposed to carry a 10G link to a neighbouring switch and it simply refuses to cmoe up, even though the platform clearly sees the module. Switch: Edgecore…
A user guide for an SNR SFP/SFP+ reprogramming solution: USB programmer plus Windows/Linux software (FTDI drivers required) supporting SFP and SFP+ per INF-8053, SFF-8472/8431, INF-8077i and INF-8438. The workflow is connect, read the module to display vendor/model/wavelength, load a new firmware…
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…
An operator asked how to use non-Intel SFP+ modules for 10G fibrre on Intel adapters under Linux. The replies summarised the practical rules: for 82599/X520 class NICs the ixgbe module parameter allowunsupportedsfp must be set, and on dual-port cards it must be given per port…
After upgrading a CRS309-1G-8S+IN from RouterOS 6.48.6 to 7.14.1 (and 7.15beta8), ports 5 and 7 with 10Gtek ASF-GE-T (FTRJ8519P1BNL-PT) copper SFPs showed sfp-rx-loss: yes and no-link when auto-negotiation was enabled; disabling auto-negotiation and forcing 1G full duplex restored the link…
The poster bought a Cisco SFP-10G-SR on eBay (markings suggesting 2007 manufacture) and, warned about counterfeit Cisco optics with longevity and safety risks, asked how to tell whether it was genuine before deploying it. Hardware involved: Cisco SFP-10G-SR. Reported symptoms/messages: authenticity…
The poster connected a Dell server to a Cisco Catalyst C9500-48Y4C (IOS XE 17.9.3) using a Dell L56SF018-SD-R 3 m DAC (DAC-SFP-3M). The cable is not in Cisco's optics compatibility matrix, and 'show interface status' shows port TwentyFiveGigE1/0/35 as err-disabled. Logging shows…
Several pairs of 3COM 2928 switches (JE007A-like, HP 1910-24G family) were linked over J9281B SFP+ DACs. After upgrading from 5.20 1108P01 to 5.20 1519P03 the links no longer came up. Before the update display transceiver interface showed STACKSFP / Tyco Electronics and simple LINK UPDOWN events…
A USB coding-board product line to reprogram optical transceivers so they match different equipment vendors. Supported form factors span GBIC, SFP, SFP+, SFP28, XFP, QSFP, QSFP28, QSFP-DD plus RJ45, DAC and AOC. The software reads, decodes, edits and writes module memory, ships about 400 well-known…
