Aruba AP-375 uplink: any way to run a Cisco BiDi SFP, or is the AP locked to approved optics?
We are pushing Wi-Fi into an outbuilding on a campus site. The only fibre going that way is a single strand, so the plan was to hang an AP-375 out there and feed it over a BiDi pair we already had on the shelf.
- Aruba AP-375, ArubaOS 8
- Cisco BiDi SFP in the AP cage, its matching partner wavelength in the switch
- one strand of single-mode between the two buildings
- AP itself is fine, it comes up normally on copper
AP-375 SFP cage: Cisco BiDi module seated, uplink never comes up
Same BiDi pair between two switches on the bench: link up, no complaintsWhat I have already done:
- swapped the two wavelengths in case I had the pair the wrong way round
- reseated the module and tried a second AP-375 out of the same batch
- dug through the AP CLI for the equivalent of the
allow-unsupported-transceiverknob that switches have, and found nothing that looks like it
So does an AP-375 accept anything other than the optics Aruba blesses, and is there an unlock command in ArubaOS 8 for the AP itself rather than for a switch? If this is a hard lock I will just buy the approved parts, but I would rather know that before I order.
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Comments 3
It is a hard lock, and it is not the usual coded-optics story. Aruba qualifies exactly two modules for the AP uplink, one SX and one LX, and the AP firmware has no unlock command at all, so there is nothing to enable and no BiDi part that will be accepted regardless of who made it.
The reason they give is thermal rather than commercial. The inside of an AP enclosure runs well outside what an ordinary non-industrial module is rated for: a module cooked in there can die early, and a module failing in the cage can damage the AP with it. That is why the approved list is short and why they are not interested in extending it.
Practical answer: take the approved SX or LX part number out of the AP ordering guide and buy that. Your single strand is the awkward part, because nobody blesses a BiDi module for this AP.
Thanks, that matches what I worked out the slow way. There is genuinely nothing in the AP CLI resembling
allow-unsupported-transceiver, and the AP dooes not even hint that it has seen a module, it just sits there with a dead uplink. The same BiDi pair links two switches over the same strand, so the optics and the fibre are not the problem.We will order the approved LX and pull a second strand, the duct has spare capacity. Mildly annoyed that the AP gives you nothing in the log to work with, a plain unsupported-module message would have saved me an afternoon of swapping wavelengths.
Same family of pain on the switch sied, for what it is worth. An Instant On switch here started raising an unsupported transceiver alert on an HPE-branded 1000BASE-T module, J8177C, that had been sitting in that port for ages. The module did not change, the software did: transceiver validation arrived in Instant On software 2.9 and anything outside their accepted list gets flagged, older revisions of HPE parts included.
allow-unsupported-transceiveris not there any more either, and nobody I asked has found a way to silence the alert while keeping the link.On the 1930 line it can be worse than a cosmetic alert. A colleague has a JL680A where a J8177D-style copper SFP is correctly logged as a 1000BASE-T module and the port still never links, whatever is plugged into the RJ45 side, and that box has no override at all. Third-party results there looked like a lottery to me: some FS parts came up, others never negotiated, and the same modules were fine in Cisco kit. Buy one and test it before ordering a box.