From: James (james@towardex.com)
Date: Mon Oct 11 2004 - 13:22:05 GMT-3
On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 12:04:46PM -0400, Sharifi, Reza wrote:
> Group,
>
> A rumor I would like to qualify or invalidate. The rumor states that Cisco
> devices running IOS 12.2.3 (I may have the version wrong) and higher will
> check to ensure that chassis GBICs used are of CISCO origin. It is said that
> it checks an EPROM chip on the GBIC to determine this. While all of Cisco's
> documentation states that CISCO GBICs should be utilized in CISCO chassis,
> realistically third party GBICs are a common way to reduce costs without
> losing functionality. If the rumor is true, it will become a great concern
> for many customers. Your comments are appreciated
The rumor unfortunately is quite true and further aggravates service provider
customers / end-users like myself. Does nothing but increasing our hatred
toward Cisco and look for other vendors --- and wait, Extreme Networks just
started doing it too! :P
Smarter folks with more clue understand that router vendors like Cisco are
reselling optics for 10x-100x the price they can be actually purchased for.
But as clearly obvious, it is the job of the vendor to rape the customers out of
the most buck they can. We start to get extremely aggravated when vendors
suddenly remove our choice in the market by locking down GBIC/SFP mods with
vendor ID for no reason other than to force customers into paying more money.
With that being said, please feel free to hack EPROM in your SFP gbic's at
will :P
-J
-- James Jun TowardEX Technologies, Inc. Technical Lead Network Design, Consulting, IT Outsourcing james@towardex.com Boston-based Colocation & Bandwidth Services cell: 1(978)-394-2867 web: http://www.towardex.com , noc: www.twdx.net
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