I don't know if ICX behave like the FCX, but on those equipments, other_vendor_SFPs work perfectly (Finisar, Skylane CWDM 70km, at least). However the brocade won't let you use "optical-monitor" on them if they are "standard coded", so you won't be able to check optical values (tx/rx dBm levels and so on). Having the other_vendor_SFP coded as a "Brocade SFP" will do the trick however.

Le 31 mars 2015 à 14:44, Joe McLeod <jmcleod@musfiber.net> a écrit :

+1 on Brocade ICX 6610 with other vendor's optics. We're using the 6610's as aggregation route/switches with a mix of Cisco, Alcatel, and 3rd party optics (one of which is a 10G BiDi) and have had no issues.

Thanks, Joe

-----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Jordan Medlen Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2015 8:09 AM To: Florian Figula Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Experience Brocade ICX7750 and other vendor SFP

I use the ICX 6610's which I believe run the same code train. I use other vendor optics to light 3 spans of dark fiber, one of which is 60km, so I have Axiom 80km optics in production there. I have had no issues. I also use the VDX series switches with other vendor optics and no issues.

Jordan Medlen Network Engineer Bisk Education

Sent from my iPhone

...

On Mar 31, 2015, at 05:55, Florian Figula <florian@figula.de> wrote:

Hi all,

does anyone have experiences regarding Brocade ICX7750 and other vendors SFP.

Information will be helpful for planing new infrastructure and costs.

Thanks to all!

On 03/31/2015 01:37 PM, Joe McLeod wrote:

That is true for the ICX as well.

As far as I know, all of the Brocade gear that traces its lineage to Foundry will attempt to work with any SFP/SPF+/etc., but you may or may not get the ability to use the live optical monitoring option as has been mentioned earlier in the thread. This appears to (should) include the entire Fastiron and Netiron family and the ICX families. I've brought this question up with my SE in the past, and the response I've gotten is that there is no intent to change this, but they reserve the right to deny support for anything believed optic related unless you have 1st-party optics. The conclusion we both reached was that, if you want to use 3rd-party optics, it's not a bad idea to have a couple suitable "spares" that are 1st-party on hand to test with. Gear that traces its lineage to Brocade is not always so forgiving. I know the converged NICs will refuse to work with non-Brocade optics, as supposedly will their Fibre Channel switches. I'm not sure where the VDX line ends up in this. It's apparently somewhat the result of actually merging the two technology lines, and it runs somewhat different software as a result. A lot of the 3rd party optic vendors will re-code for either no or some nominal charge, so that's always an option. According to the Brocade SE I talked to, generally either it works up front (99% of the time) and has comparable reliability to 1st-party optics, or it has essentially immediate problems, so you know to do something about it. Personally, I've used non-Brocade/non-Foundry optics on various platforms (mostly Foundry era) with no real problems aside from the loss of optic monitoring. Foundry and Brocade source them from various OEMs, seemingly whoever is cheap that day, so this isn't surprising. -- Brandon Martin