Those GigE ports are questionable at best. However, I have found that the cards with the Finisar GBICs are more reliable than the other branded GBICs that Foundry used. This goes for the single/dual GigE uplinks for ServerIrons as well.
Just an FYI... -Gilli On 7/30/06 10:31 AM, "Richard A Steenbergen" <ras at e-gerbil.net> wrote: > On Sun, Jul 30, 2006 at 03:58:17PM +0200, Gunther Stammwitz wrote: >> Hello colleagues, >> >>> From time to time Gigabit-Fiber-Ports on our old >> BI8GMR-Jetcore-Managementmodules are dying. In most cases they're starting >> to cause crc-errors which can be seen as rx-errors on the devices connected >> to them. Other ports are completely dead and don't bring up any link at all. >> >> I have heard that this is "normal" because the lasers on those modules are >> so old and are reaching their end of life. Is there a cheap way to replace >> them? >> >> What about the B8GMR3-Modules: are they affected too? I'm thinking about >> replacing the B8GMRs with B8GMR3s because they are cheap on the grey market >> - but this would only make sense if they're not affected. > > Boy are they ever. I have dozens of B8GMR3 and B8G cards with dead ports > a-plenty, some with 6 7 or even all 8 ports completely unusable. There is > a reason those cards are so cheap on the grey market, and that is that no > one wants to gamble on them. Even if everything checks out today, they can > start failing one by one tomorrow, and in 6 months you can have a card > with no working ports. > > Foundry seems to have one of the worst problems in this area by far, > primarily with certain brands of optics used in early production runs (I > used to know which, but I've honestly stopped caring). Other versions of > the same cards can still run forever, but you never know what you're going > to get. If you really care and you can work a soldering iron, it's cheap > and easy to replace those 1x9 transceivers, but personally this stopped > being worth my time compared to buying new systems with 6x the density a > long time ago. :) > > If you really must keep using (or at least doing new deployments of) those > things, do yourself a favor and buy cards with modular optics like M4s and > BxGs for a few bucks more. -- Gillian Canty-Ross PH: +1617-680-6492 SubSpace Communications, LLC http://www.subspacecom.com AIM: gillicanty Skype: gillicanty The Geeks' choice for Network Gear!
