optics pricing (Re: Weird GigE Media Converter Behavior)

Mon Aug 30 06:19:03 UTC 2004

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004, Michel Py wrote:

> 1. Support: sometimes you will need vendor support, and
> this is especially true of new products. Putting
> Kingston DRAM in a 2600 is one thing; a limited test on
> a few routers will quickly show if it works or not, and
> the odds of an IOS upgrade that would suddenly trigger
> the third-party memory to cause problems are close to
> zero, as DRAM as long passed the development stage and
> is now a commodity.
> 
> OTOH, you won't have that many OC-192 IRs or LRs to play
> with. Maybe you'd try one third party PHY, then another
> one if the first one works, and so on. And suddenly
> something changes (which does happen with new products)
> and your vendor implements the changes on their PHYs but
> not on yours. You're screwed.

I can see the vendor's concern about support.

But it seems pretty hollow when after they lock me into a 
specific SFP, to "help" me, they mark it up 4x or 
more--because they can.

If it was really about better customer experience, they
would "lock" it down to an approved list of 3rd-party
products, any of which could be purchased off the open
market. Or they would publish a list of approved and/or
supported 3rd-party optics, like Cisco used to do.

Those customers who wanted to get the endorsed OEM product
could buy those. And customers who wanted to cut corners at
the risk of losing jobs and lower-quality service could do
so.

I've not seen any efforts by vendors to do anything about
3rd-party optics other than to prohibit them. So the vendors
that still support 3rd-party optics must not be experiencing
excruciating pain.

As discussed at a recent NANOG, the vendor-specified
modifications to the optics are trivial and do not justify
the proprietary lock-up or the mark-up (if they did, then
you'd expect the vendors to patent them and not have to lock
them up).

Unfortunately the only way this will change, if it can
change, is with customer pressure, and to a very small
extent, competitive pressure. Hopefully enough large vendors
will allow 3rd-party optics so the threat to buy from the
other guy will be credible.

Pete.