GBIC compatibility and pricing (was Managed, cheap, DC power switches)

Thu Jul 17 22:15:45 UTC 2008

This reason is twofold, one is Resellers were just buying whatever cheap
gbics they could and bundling them with Procurve switches (I'm sure this
happens to other vendors too).  Thus most of the profitable parts of
switch sales were being eroded by the resellers.

The other is that Procurve offers a lifetime warranty on most (possibly
all) of their products, including gbics I believe, thus the premium.  I
believe you can just RMA a Procurve GBIC, and they will send you a new
one, no receipts, no worries, no expiration, no service contract.

He shouldn't have to eat 300 gbics unless he bought non-Procurve ones to
begin with.  HP should be able to exchange/reprogram them if they were
HP Gbics.  

Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay R. Ashworth [mailto:jra at baylink.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 1:32 PM
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: OT: GBIC compatibility and pricing (was Managed, cheap,DC
power switches)
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 01:16:09PM -0700, Seth Mattinen wrote:
> > Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > >For what it's worth, I gave the sales rep what-for about the price,
and
> > >he gave it back to me, telling me that Procurve switches will only
> > >accept Procurve(-compatible) SFP GBICs, which cost more, both
because
> > >they're compatible, and because they're SFP.
> >
> > Recent Procurve switches only accept "rev B" modules; I have a
new-ish
> > switch that won't accept a pile of Finisar optics that did work in
older
> > HP switches. I don't know what the difference between "rev B" and
older
> > ones are, though.
> 
> Specifically, that rep (Bill Billings) told me that a *firware
upgrade*
> broke compatibility with the old GBICs, which *originally* worked, and
> he ended up eating nearly 300 of them at one point.
> 
> But we're probably off topic now.  :-)
> 
> Cheers,
> -- jra
> --
> Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink
jra at baylink.com
> Designer                     The Things I Think
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