Re: AW: Recommended 1Gb SFP for ~115km?

2010-08-10 Thread Will Hargrave

On 4 Aug 2010, at 17:58, Thomas Weible wrote:

 Cisco did a quite good job on implementing the DDM characteristics of the 
 optics. So why not to take a 32dB or even 41dB power budget SFP and make it 
 workable in the switch / router. Works like charm in some setups and you see 
 straight the actual line.


Sadly not the case here.

OP is using a 6506, and the majority of the 67xx linecards released (which are 
the decent gige linecards for 6500) don't even support DDM/DOM at all. Only the 
very latest hardware revisions do. Sigh.

Other vendors refuse to report light levels from optics they didn't supply. 
This is just a bad-faith way round the RFP/tender clauses we've all been 
including for the past 5 years prohibiting vendor locking optics. Shame on them.


Will





AW: Recommended 1Gb SFP for ~115km?

2010-08-04 Thread Thomas Weible
Hi,

the setup with two media-converters works but has a major drawback. If you want 
to see the overall line (digital diagnostic) you always have to take into 
consideration that there are actually 3 physical links involved in the overall 
link. Looking from your routers you only see the SX link (basically 2 meters 
via patchcord). The potential trouble making long distance link is hidden - or 
you have to look on the media-converters (if management is implemented).

Cisco did a quite good job on implementing the DDM characteristics of the 
optics. So why not to take a 32dB or even 41dB power budget SFP and make it 
workable in the switch / router. Works like charm in some setups and you see 
straight the actual line.

cheers
Thomas

PS: hello to NANOG from my site. I just got invited to the list because of this 
topic here. My field are the fibre optic networks based on pluggable technology.

-Ursprüngliche Nachricht-
Von: Abello, Vinny [mailto:vinny_abe...@dell.com] 
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 4. August 2010 18:27
An: Justin M. Streiner
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Betreff: RE: Recommended 1Gb SFP for ~115km?

Thanks for the input, Justin. I'm familiar with Transition Networks and have 
used their solutions in other scenarios (as well as MRV). I'm aware of the 
fiber characteristics being a major factor of the link budget and dispersion, 
etc. I am waiting on measurements from the company who is finishing the 
splicing of the fiber for us so I know what I have to work with.

Thanks again!

-Vinny

-Original Message-
From: Justin M. Streiner [mailto:strei...@cluebyfour.org]
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 7:46 AM
To: Abello, Vinny
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Recommended 1Gb SFP for ~115km?

On Wed, 4 Aug 2010, Abello, Vinny wrote:

 Any pointers on real world experience on this topic would greatly be 
 appreciated. What are people using successfully out there as far as 
 third party SFP's go to hit a distance of approximately 115km? This 
 would be for
a
 Catalyst 6506. Cisco's solution was a much more costly EDFA solution, 
 but
I
 see plenty of vendors that make SFP's for Gigabit Ethernet that range 
 from 115km to 150km and more. I know these are not supported by Cisco 
 and TAC won't troubleshoot if they are in the switch. I'm willing to 
 work around that should I need TAC assistance on the switch. What 
 works well for a single wavelength solution at this distance without 
 having to switch to DWDM? This circuit will have duplex fibers.

I just lit a ~110km fiber span with gigabit gear in the last few weeks, and I 
ended up going with an external line driver because the native Cisco options 
wouldn't work, for a variety of reasons.  I would have preferred to plug 
directly into the 6509s I have at each end, but it wasn't feasible.

I ended up going with gear from Transition Networks.  Pricing was pretty 
reasonable and their customer service has been great so far.  There are some 
things with the management interface that I'm not too crazy about, but nothing 
that was a show-stopper.  The driver has a 2-port SFP module that takes the 
LX12 long-haul signal in one side we drop it out the other side as 1000baseSX 
to drop into the 6509s.  Works like a charm.

I also looked at kit from MRV and Metrobility.  The MRV stuff looked good too.

Having said all that, you need to take into account the engineering 
characteristics of the fiber span, to make sure you choose gear that will live 
within the attenuation and dispersion limits that physics, fiber quality, 
splice quality, etc will impose upon you.

On the 110km span I just lit, I used the G.652 spec as a guide and figured for 
0.2 dB/km of attenuation at 1550 nm and 0.5 dB of loss for each connector, 
which got me an estimated loss budget of about 23 db, and the span tested out 
better than that.  With an additional cross-connect at the one end I'm still at 
about 22.5 dB end to end.  The LX12 optics I used from Transition have a link 
budget of 32 dB, so we have a bit of headroom.

jms




Re: AW: Recommended 1Gb SFP for ~115km?

2010-08-04 Thread Justin M. Streiner

On Wed, 4 Aug 2010, Thomas Weible wrote:

the setup with two media-converters works but has a major drawback. If 
you want to see the overall line (digital diagnostic) you always have to 
take into consideration that there are actually 3 physical links 
involved in the overall link. Looking from your routers you only see 
the SX link (basically 2 meters via patchcord). The potential trouble 
making long distance link is hidden - or you have to look on the 
media-converters (if management is implemented).


I agree on the point that external media converters do have drawbacks 
(additional failure points, etc), but the drivers I used for the link I 
just lit show me details about link health, in terms of transmit/receive
power, etc, that a show interface would not tell me.  I considered 
Cisco's position re: using 3rd-party optics in their switches to be a 
show-stopper for a direct-plug solution.  I would have preferred to go 
that route if it was viable.


That's not to say that FlexOptix SFPs wouldn't work in the OP's case (or 
my case for that matter) - it will just take some time and experience to 
sell my management on the upside of buying optics from someone other than 
Cisco/Juniper/F5/etc :)


jms