Cisco's “unsupported” SFP and making them work - sometimes

We had an interesting incident yesterday. Our network has lots of Huawei and Cisco devices. We use SFP's and XFP's widely on all the platforms. In an ideal world Huawei sfp's should work on Cisco whenever you plug it (there's some HP  switches from which I have borrowed SFP's to cisco and Huawei without any problems) in and this was never an issue on the Huawei end. So it's not a consistent problem for me/us.

Trying it on an ASR 1006 turned out to not be as straight forward. We had to use a 'hidden command'.

*Mar 28 11:07:49.547: %TRANSCEIVER-6-REMOVED: SIP0/3: Transceiver module removed from POS0/3/0

*Mar 28 11:07:59.542: %TRANSCEIVER-6-INSERTED: SIP0/3: transceiver module inserted in POS0/3/0

*Mar 28 11:08:01.160: %ASR1000_RP_ALARM-6-INFO: CLEAR CRITICAL xcvr container 0/3/0 Transceiver Missing - Link Down

*Mar 28 11:08:01.161: %ASR1000_RP_ALARM-6-INFO: ASSERT CRITICAL POS0/3/0 Physical Port Link Down

*Mar 28 11:08:01.124: %TRANSCEIVER-3-NOT_SUPPORTED: SIP0/3: Detected for transceiver module in POS0/3/0, module disabled

Next the command is run:

FW-LB-Rtr(config)#service un?

% Unrecognized command

The above tells you that its hidden and won't come up under context help by typing a question mark.

FW-LB-Rtr(config)#service unsupported-transceiver

You get a warning as shown below so be careful what you do or don't do:

Warning: When Cisco determines that a fault or defect can be traced to

the use of third-party transceivers installed by a customer or reseller,

then, at Cisco's discretion, Cisco may withhold support under warranty or

a Cisco support program. In the course of providing support for a Cisco

networking product Cisco may require that the end user install Cisco

transceivers if Cisco determines that removing third-party parts will

assist Cisco in diagnosing the cause of a support issue.

 

FW-LB-Rtr(config)#

and our interface came up

*Mar 28 12:28:36.354: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: SIP0/3: Interface POS0/3/0, changed state to up

*Mar 28 12:28:37.372: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface POS0/3/0, changed state to up

Please note the command is supported on some switches.