A case against vendor-locking optical modules

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1

Hello,

I'm having a discussion with Arista, trying to explain to them why I
_can't_ buy any hardware unable to run with compatible optical modules.

My points are :

- I need specific modules, mostly *WDM and BiDi, some still unavailable
in their product line

- I run at least two other vendors on every locations and can't stack up
every spare optics for each of them, neither could remote-hands safely
re-program optics to match a specific vendor when needed.

- I have an established relationship with a trusted optics supplier,
providing support, warranty and re-coding hardware for their entire
(impressive) lineup. And this supplier is still 2-5x times cheaper than
any vendor-labeled optics even with NFR-like discounts.

Based on these points, I discourage every customers of ever using
locked-in equipments, and forbid them on my own network. Of course,
Arista can't be pleased because their hardware never stepped chord in my
customer's networks. But they seem to deliberatly miss my points every
time the subject comes up.

What are other arguments against vendor lock-in ? Is there any argument
FOR such locks (please spare me the support issues, if you can't read
specs and SNMP, you shouldn't even try networking) ?

Did you ever experience a shift in a vendor's position regarding the use
of compatible modules ?

Thanks !

2

Let talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the room and the #1 reason to hate vendor locked optics. Some vendors (yes, Cisco I'm looking at you) want to charge ridiculously high prices for optic that are identical to generic optics other than the vendor lock. Maybe a better tactic would be to have the vendor explain to you why the vendor lock is necessary. You are after all the customer and don't owe them any explanations.

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL

3

Hello,

TheWorldMainBusinessRule says: "Don't work with morons!!!" Never. In any
way. Even if it seems for the first look they give you prices and offers
times better than normal people. Just don't even think.

:slight_smile:

4

Vendor Lock's... this is nothing new, it has been in practice since the beginning of the IT / Computer Industry...

We have seen this with Cables (old old days, Vax/PDP 11/ IBM Mainframes, well into the PC cycle), Floppy Drives, Hard Drivers etc etc etc...

To the best of my knowledge, none of this was ever won by argument with the vendor...This always changed with time...
When more and more people started deploying generic / non oem items, the vendors were forced to either turn a blind eye or forced to reconsider...

The big carrot or stick, the vendors always held with the Customers / Consumers, was the warranty and or support.

If history has any advice to offer, it would be, if you are not dependent on warranty or support issues from the Vendor, then go forward, do what you please, ..

:slight_smile:

Regards.

Faisal Imtiaz

5

Hi Jérôme,

Change "can't" to "won't", because you find it inconvenient and insulting
to work around artificial and costly problems created by your vendor. If
you can't use their equipment then they haven't lost any business but if
you _won't_ then they have.

Then schedule a call with the CEO, not your salesman. The CEO probably
doesn't understand it, probably caused it, and probably won't understand it
when you're done talking. He will understand "customer ditching us over
some subordinate's stupid behavior," and will assign someone more technical
with instructions to redress the error.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

6

If history has any advice to offer, it would be, if you are not
dependent on warranty or support issues from the Vendor, then go
forward, do what you please, ..

Well, I could go on and re-code the optics, at least by simply cloning a
few OEMs.

But there is still the spare items issue. No datacenter remote-hands
will accept any lyability in operating a recoder (wich, when not
operated properly, can easily fry the module). So I have to keep
multiple spares per module type, each beeing recoded and labelled for
different vendors.

Change "can't" to "won't", because you find it inconvenient and
insulting to work around artificial and costly problems created by
your vendor. If you can't use their equipment then they haven't lost
any business but if you _won't_ then they have.

Let's talk about the £800 gorilla in the room then : it's not an issue
for a $20 LX SFP, it may be doable for a $120 LR SFP+, it's certainly
not an option for an ER-DWDM SFP+ 8-40 waves set ($800 each).

You're right about how inconvinient and insulting such restrictions
feel, but my main concern is about costs, efficiency and logistics.

Having to stock more spare optics, one per vendor, has its cost. Having
to cheat the restriction by recoding the optics, also has costs in terms
of time, tools and complexity. At the end of the day, everyone loses.

Because it's absurd and induce more costs and complexity, I _can't_ fall
into such trap. Because it's insulting and bordeline moronic to begin
with, I certainly _won't_.

Now, about discussing with a CEO, I'm not really sure it could be
reached. Salesmen on the other hand have their own interest in both
selling OEM modules to the corporate market, and unlocked equipments to
the SP/telco market, to whom they won't sell anything otherwise.

Is it unrealistic to hope for enough salesmen pressure on the corporate
ladder to make such moronic attitude be reversed in the short term ?

Best regards,

7

You say lock in, they say loyalty....

Tell them loyalty is two ways, and you need them to help you remain a loyal customer. To start with, a fantastic CLA. Make sure it includes 15 minute new optics delivery in case of failure (since you can't keep spares on-site as they are too expensive.) Technicians available without wait time to help you focus/finish/program them. Not instant response to take a ticket, followed by a call within 4 hours, but instant response by a knowledgeable tech who finishes the call by filling out a ticket. Etc.

If they want vendor focused thinking on your part with concomitant committing of resources ($$), they need customer focused thinking on theirs.

They want your loyalty, awesome... let them know what it will take. Remind them of how much money you will spend this year if they can get your lock in.

I'm just singing here.
--p

8

> Change "can't" to "won't", because you find it inconvenient and
> insulting to work around artificial and costly problems created by
> your vendor. If you can't use their equipment then they haven't lost
> any business but if you _won't_ then they have.

Let's talk about the £800 gorilla in the room then : it's not an issue
for a $20 LX SFP, it may be doable for a $120 LR SFP+, it's certainly
not an option for an ER-DWDM SFP+ 8-40 waves set ($800 each).

You're right about how inconvinient and insulting such restrictions
feel, but my main concern is about costs, efficiency and logistics.

Having to stock more spare optics, one per vendor, has its cost. Having
to cheat the restriction by recoding the optics, also has costs in terms
of time, tools and complexity. At the end of the day, everyone loses.

Because it's absurd and induce more costs and complexity, I _can't_ fall
into such trap. Because it's insulting and bordeline moronic to begin
with, I certainly _won't_.

Have they had a bad quarter because they carelessly induced indirect costs
which priced them out of the market? This is something their CEO would like
to know about.

Now, about discussing with a CEO, I'm not really sure it could be
reached. Salesmen on the other hand have their own interest in both
selling OEM modules to the corporate market, and unlocked equipments to
the SP/telco market, to whom they won't sell anything otherwise.

You'd be surprised how reachable CEOs are, but if you have any trouble
making an appointment, call the CFO instead. CFO's are lonely. Almost
nobody ever calls them. The CFO will take the call from a
customer/investor, and unlike your salesman the CFO has the CEO's ear. And
if he's had a bad quarter, the CFO is even more in tune with the idea that
an indirect cost (which makes them no direct money) caused you not to buy.

Is it unrealistic to hope for enough salesmen pressure on the corporate
ladder to make such moronic attitude be reversed in the short term ?

Your salesman is not a corporate warrior. He spends his time working the
lowest hanging fruit he can find. Unless you have a *lot* of money to
spend, that isn't a customer who requires a change to corporate policy.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

9

I've asked the same question and got the answer that there is a REAL BIG
chip manufacture that was having huge system issue and told the vendor that
they were going to rip out all the manufactures routing / switching
equipment if they didn't get it fixed.

after the manufacture send engineering staff on site they found that the
problem was not the routers or switches but the SFP's that the Chip
manufacture had purchased. After replacing the SFP's they had no problems.

So if you were the router manufacture you might also put in the
locks....... Just say'n

I hate it also, but I also really like a stable network. I also know that
there are some OEM's for even Cisco that I have used in the past.

Just my two cents.

Scott

10

I've heard that explanation a number of times in various forms. I suspect it was an explanation crafted to counter the argument.

Regardless, it should have been simple enough to rule out the optics with proper diagnostics and swapping out of suspect units.

The real reason of course is margin

http://www.lightreading.com/optical/optical-components/ciscos-secret-franchise/d/d-id/631651

11

That is their most popular argument. However this is no different from putting a NIC card. RAM, or hard drives in a server platform. For that matter, do you blame the network vendor if you have a faulty optical cable? In your example, can you be sure that the SFP was the issue? You can't be because someone obviously did not follow the standards for the SFP interface, was it the network gear or the SFP itself. Just because brand X does not work with switch Y does not make it brand Xs fault.

Obviously if there is a flaw in the NIC, the server guys should not get blamed. Just as there are standards for USB, PCI, SATA, and other, there are standards for SFP and SFP+ interfaces. If the optic vendor is not compliant, that's their problem and if your network gear does not accept any optic that complies with the standard that is the network gear's fault. Consider how you would feel if HP servers only accepted HP hard drives or would not accept an Intel NIC, would you accept that?

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL

12

there's a reason why cisco introduced "service unsupported-transceiver",
which still remains an undocumented command. i have arista gear as well.
kinda wish they had a similar undocumented command.

13

In the case of some vendors (yes, you again, Cisco), the shift has been in the wrong direction.

Some vendors treat optics as just a tool to do a job, and price accordingly. Those vendors tend to have fairly relaxed policies re: working with non-$vendor optics, as well.

Other vendors treat optics as a cash cow^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprofit center, and also price accordingly. Those vendors tend to scream bloody murder if a non-$vendor optic is encountered.

Beyond that, I'd say you've covered all of the logical reasons why vendor lock-in is a bad idea, but as others have mentioned in this thread, those attitudes tend to change at a ridiculously slow pace, and only when forced by market conditions.

jms

14

No salesperson is likely to do that for you. They know only to well that eliminating vendor lock-in means they will lose sales on artificially costly optics from $vendor to a lower-cost rival. Less sales = less commission for the affected sales person.

jms

15

I suspect that losing the commission on a few $6digit chassis sales is worse
than losing the commission on a $3digit optic?

16

That turns into a forest > trees problem. Many salescritters don't think about the larger picture, or the responsible business units don't care about what affects other business units. Also, in the 10G-and-up world, most of those optics are a lot more than $3digits.

jms

17

What are other arguments against vendor lock-in ? Is there any argument
FOR such locks (please spare me the support issues, if you can't read
specs and SNMP, you shouldn't even try networking) ?

there have been documented cases in the past where transceivers have had
serious problems working on kit, where those problems have ranged from the
transceivers simply not working correctly to the network devices crashing
and rebooting. The kit vendor gets the blame in all situations, even
though it's not always their fault.

Ultimately, transceivers are devices which need device drivers to work
properly. I haven't seen any driver code for handling them, but if you
take a look at any other device driver, you'll probably notice that a good
chunk of the code is spend dealing with quirks and device-specific
weirdness. From talking to vendors, I understand that the situation is
much the same with optical transceivers. So there are some technical
reasons for being cautious about this, particular at the early stage of
transceiver development.

Having said that, most vendors use transceiver lock-out for strictly
commercial purposes and will refuse to enable full functionality on third
party kit as a matter of policy. Bear it in mind that for every customer
who doesn't accept this, the vendor will make 10x as much cash with this
policy by applying it to enterprise and public sector.

Did you ever experience a shift in a vendor's position regarding the use
of compatible modules ?

No, but I've never had the opportunity to wave $100m at a vendor either.

These days I buy blank transceivers from a reputable third party vendor,
and recode them in-house as appropriate for whatever kit we need to use
them in. This works well for me, but other people will have different
policies which work well for them.

Nick

18

The Packetpushers recently discussed this issue:

  http://packetpushers.net/ps-show-35-oem-sfp-qsfp-modules-work/

Jethro.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jethro R Binks, Network Manager,
Information Services Directorate, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, number SC015263.

19

Arista does have it (at least in older codes, no idea if it still works).

http://serverfault.com/questions/281534/what-is-the-command-to-enable-3rd-party-sfp-transceivers-on-arista-switch

One note: I did not have to reboot the switch for it to work. That took
care of *most* 3rd-party optics, but I seem to recall it didn't cover 100%.

Ken

20

Well, there is a command, and you can automate it's application.

See https://gist.github.com/agh/932bbd1f74d312573925 .

Can't tell if DOM is supported on 3rd party.