On Thu, 21 Oct 2021 at 09:22, <ga...@mlfwd.de> wrote: > Risk? Not really any risk there ... in 20+ years of using third party > optics/SFPs, we've never had an issue with any ... only situation, as > others have stated, could be when opening a ticket with TAC and the > optics aren't reported as Cisco ...
When optic MSA is young (100G still kind of qualifies, 400G definitely) there are a lot of interop issues, as different parties interpret MSA ambiguities differently. Copper link-down detection is a notorious source of issues as well. So certainly the 1st party has a higher probability of not having interop problems. Over time the market converges to specific interpretation of MSA and the probability of parts working together becomes so high you can't justify testing. Having said that, the only way to actually know what you are buying is to buy from a 3rd party. Vendor changes the optic without changing SKU, so if you're doing any type of testing, it's largely belief work with low utility, as you won't know if the next order is the same parts or not. It is possible to source from 3rd party in a way where you know what parts are used and they can guarantee to ship those parts or notify of changes. So if you are willing to test and occasionally work with your 3rd party provider to solve interop issues, I think 3rd party is much more preferable. If you just want to call a single number and say 'make it go' and never test, 1st party is better. The range of ways to source from 3rd parties is large, there are brokers who ship whatever they can find, there are resellers who regularly change suppliers, there are resellers who always source from X if they have the part and then you can buy directly from the manufacturer. So there is much more room to do 3rd party sourcing wrong compared to 1st party sourcing. But if you are able to do it right, it tends to be the superior way to do it. -- ++ytti _______________________________________________ cisco-nsp mailing list cisco-nsp@puck.nether.net https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/