I think this vendor-supported SFP was big issue from HP ethernet switch since it was appeared from HP ethernet switch firmware upgrade without much attention. It should be standard, so it shouldn't matter which vender's SFP is. But since HP decided to stick with their own SFP, some third party vendor starts to ask for which vendor's equipment to be used with SFP, and they programmed firmware to simulate specific vendor's SFP by placing vendor code or something like that. Sometimes when I ordered specific vendor's Part Number for SFP from specific vendor's reseller, still it is delivered with third party vendor's SFP. I don't know whether reseller is making money because of price difference, or not. Hyun Steve Dalberg wrote:
This reason is twofold, one is Resellers were just buying whatever cheap gbics they could and bundling them with Procurve switches (I'm sure this happens to other vendors too). Thus most of the profitable parts of switch sales were being eroded by the resellers.
The other is that Procurve offers a lifetime warranty on most (possibly all) of their products, including gbics I believe, thus the premium. I believe you can just RMA a Procurve GBIC, and they will send you a new one, no receipts, no worries, no expiration, no service contract.
He shouldn't have to eat 300 gbics unless he bought non-Procurve ones to begin with. HP should be able to exchange/reprogram them if they were HP Gbics.
Steve
-----Original Message----- From: Jay R. Ashworth [mailto:jra@baylink.com] Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 1:32 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: OT: GBIC compatibility and pricing (was Managed, cheap,DC
power switches)
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 01:16:09PM -0700, Seth Mattinen wrote:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
For what it's worth, I gave the sales rep what-for about the price,
and
he gave it back to me, telling me that Procurve switches will only accept Procurve(-compatible) SFP GBICs, which cost more, both
because
they're compatible, and because they're SFP.
Recent Procurve switches only accept "rev B" modules; I have a
new-ish
switch that won't accept a pile of Finisar optics that did work in
older
HP switches. I don't know what the difference between "rev B" and
older
ones are, though.
Specifically, that rep (Bill Billings) told me that a *firware
upgrade*
broke compatibility with the old GBICs, which *originally* worked, and he ended up eating nearly 300 of them at one point.
But we're probably off topic now. :-)
Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink
jra@baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think
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