SFP works or not depending on the country of origin.. weird

[rikul]

Upon trying to install new switch, we realized that new SFPs did not work at all, however after check Cisco documentation, they informed that this switch WS-C4500X-32 is completely compatible with with SFPs GLC-TE

Current Switch IOS version is Version 03.11.02.E, then it should work, something that surprised us it that , we tested another Old SFPs that we found as spare, they are the same reference and they work perfectly, upon compare the new ones and old ones SFPs, the only difference is the country source, our old SFPs are from China and the New ones are from Malaysia, then, can you please help me to resolve this issue ?

This is the new SFPs (they do not work):

This is the old SFPs (they work):

Thanks

[Ramblin Tech]

The country of origin in itself (China vs Malaysia) is not the most likely root cause of the issue, as the pictures show that these SFPs have different version numbers: V01 (old) vs V03 (new). It is not uncommon for a Cisco SKU (GLC-TE) to go through a few revisions during its life cycle to address component changes, engineering change orders, tweaks to the PROM, etc. I would first suspect the version change, if the new SFPs were sourced directly from an authorized Cisco VAR or distributor. If the new SPFs came from a non-authorized source, a counterfeit product cannot be ruled out (also not uncommon).

A TAC case will determine if the new SFPs are genuine, and if so, what the root cause is.

[balaji.bandi]

as long as they recognised in the SFP port they should work - until it was malfunctioning (seen some GLC-T failed in my views)

[Leo Laohoo]

This could be CSCvm01886.

The two GLC-TE optics are made by different OEM.  The serial number that starts with AVC is Avago (now Broadcom), one of the two largest OEM for optics Cisco buys from (the other one is Finisar).  

My answer to this question is to use 3rd party.  This is one of the major reasons people continuously use 3rd party optics over Cisco-branded optics because the 3rd party optics work on "first use" (and does not require software upgrades to iron out the bugs generated by the Cisco-branded optics).  Another reason is the optic vendor can "re-flash" the optic.  For instance, every Cisco appliance will always have MM and LR/LX enabled as a minimum.  I have seen SFP-10G-T re-flashed as SFP-10G-SR used in 9500 running firmware versions that pre-dates supported version for SFP-10G-T.