Re: PCIe adapters supporting long distance 10GB fiber?

[Jim Shankland <nanog () shankland org>]

On 6/20/17 8:15 AM, Baldur Norddahl wrote:
> The real question here is: will my NIC support other SFP+ modules than the
> few options carried by the NIC vendor?
>
> For example Intel claims the Intel NICs can only accept SFP+ modules by
> Intel. They probably do not make optics themselves and only have few
> options available. And indeed if you put in a third party optic it will be
> rejected.
The last I looked -- and it's been a few years, so it might no longer be 
true -- the check for this was in the driver software, which is 
open-sourced. The check was even guarded by an ifdef so that it was 
easily disabled. If you disabled the check, you got a hyperventilating 
syslog warning saying you were taking your life into your hands by using 
unapproved equipment. That warning could then be ignored while it 
receded into rotated and, eventually, expunged log history.

As I said, that was a few years ago, so would need to be reconfirmed.

Jim