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The price of fiber optic Transceivers such as, SFP, SFP+, XFP, QSFP, and CFP keeps on going up over the time. But the price of the Transceivers is higher than it should thru upcharges, when obtained from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) such as Juniper, HP or Cisco. Over all there are some benefits to implementing a single vendor network. However savings, from acquiring aftermarket Transceivers, exceeds the economic value of vendor similarity, when having the huge pricing difference in fiber optic Transceiver cost between OEMs and many 3rd party. This is the reason that many network operators have been shifting to 3rd party Transceivers from last few years.
In reality, sales person from the OEMs and their approved suppliers try to get price competitive as hard as they can. However, they are bounded by contractual agreements identifying minimum sell prices of the parts. They keep trying to lower their price, for example with discounts, but they are still much higher compared to the 3rd party Transceivers. Except the cost of Transceivers, the opinions regarding quality are common. Actually, anyone that had the practice of using 3rd party Transceivers recognizes that the performances of both OEM and 3rd party Transceivers are the same. And after long-term opinions about availability, quality and support issues rejected, the OEM sales person will claim that installed 3rd party Transceivers in the device will invalid its warranty. This triggered much debate among the users.
Let’s discuss that using 3rd party Transceiver modules, will really void the switch warranty?
The answer to the above question is: No. If the equipment is faulty, the vendors are obliged to justify the terms of the warranty, since a good 3rd party Transceivers are fully obedient to MSA (Multi-Source Agreement), unless it can be confirmed that the use of the 3rd party Transceivers damages the equipment. Though, it is improbable that 3rd party optic Transceivers will bring damage to the equipment by itself. Let’s have an SFP Transceiver for example:
- SFP Transceiver changes electrical data from the equipment, into optical signal to the fiber. There is no external power surge from optical ports which may damage the equipment.
- SFP receives power from the equipment to which it is attached, so it is probably that the equipment may damages the SFP. Since all the current and voltage requirement are as per MSA and the equipment should be able to support the standard power requirements for SFP ports.
- Due to MSA compliance the physical dimensions are of standard size. The SFP will fit accordingly to MSA obedient device, without causing damage to the electrical circuit of the equipment.
- If installations of SFP modules are controlled by personnel who are appropriately grounded, there is no electrostatic damage to the device.
Obviously, one should be aware of that the equipment warranty would not cover any 3rd party Transceivers installed in their network. Yet occasionally, the OEM sales person attempt to exaggerate this as if it is an abnormal, or exceptional matter. The truth is a typical network is contains many devices from various manufacturers, with each device supported by its manufacturer’s warranty. For example, you use Cisco switch, Juniper router, HP server, and fiber optic compatible Transceivers from another brand. In practice, the SFP from cisco can be used on a Juniper router and 3rd party Transceivers will work perfectly fine with a Cisco switch.
As the prominent global producer and supplier of compatible optical Transceiver modules, the brand BlueOptics constantly specialized in compatibility and maintained on the highest performance of the optical components by the use of brand products from Avago, Mitsubishi Electric, Maxim Integrated and others. Currently, BlueOptics has already proven a widespread inventory of fiber optic Transceivers. Most of the common used Transceivers which are intended to be compatible with many major vendors are in stock and with very competitive prices. Use BlueOptics compatible Transceivers in your network now, so that you should enjoy your warranty right from Cisco for your switch and from HP for your server, as well as warranty and support for your BlueOptics Transceivers.
