I was just offered some old FibreChannel 2 Gbit/sec and 4 Gbit/sec transceivers pulled from someone’s old SAN setup. I don’t really need them as I have all the SFP connections I need at the moment, but I was curious: is there any chance they’ll work with my MikroTik gear? If I put them into an SFP+ port (e.g. CSR328) will they run at 2/4 Gbit/sec, or do they fall down to 1 Gbit/sec, as I may infer from both modules’ “1000BASE-SX” specification?
If they work, they’ll work at 1Gbps. And they’ll likely overheat, older SFPs consumed more power than modern ones while Mikrotik devices generally are not known to be good at heat dissipation (specially so the passively cooled ones).
I’ve used some 2Gb-FC SFP as regular 1 Gigabit Ethernet in Mikrotiks. Just set auto-negotiation=no and speed=1Gbps. For 4Gb and 8Gb I have no experience.
Yes, same here. Also used some FC SFPs I got very cheap (<$1 per piece… no one wants these nowadays) and they mostly worked. Some even with auto-negotiation enabled. As for heat, they aren’t that bad, not much different from any other SFP. Now if only Mikrotik had more WIFI devices with SFP slots (where’s some 60GHz gear with SFP?)…
For the archives, the SFP+ port in my CRS328 seemed to accept the 4 Gbit SFPs I tried in it, but the other end of the link is a hEX S with a regular old SFP port, and it didn’t like them at all.
I had more luck with the 2 Gbit SFPs: they work in both MT boxes, and I got a solid gigabit iperf3 result through them.
I then tried a 4G FC SFP in the CRS328, leaving a 2G FC SFP in the hEX S, but they couldn’t negotiate a connection.
I don’t have another switch or router with an SFP+ port to try them in, and if I did, I’d want to put proper 10 Gbit SFPs in, so I’ll be returning these 4G SFPs.
Just tried some old Apple 4Gbps FC 3m DAC.
Working fine at 1Gbps with RB2011 and CRS310. 