Spotting Counterfeit Cisco Transceivers
A co-worker recently brought something interesting over for me to look at - he was getting ready to ship out some 10gig XFP's for one of our sites, went into our store room, grabbed some and got back to his desk, only to find that the two identically labelled models, one from Thailand and one from Malaysia, both X2-10GB-SR modules from Cisco, seemed suspicious given the current scares about bogus Cisco hardware in the wild.
Being paranoid, we've contacted Cisco, but they've been less than helpful in anything other than verifying that both have valid serial numbers so far - but we've escalated the discussion to see if anyone in the community can help!
Here they are:
Of the two XFP's above, the upper one weighs in (unofficially) as about one ounce - very light indeed. The lower unit has substantially more mass to it - it weighs in (unofficially) at 3-4 ounces - it's much heavier and feels more solid - it was this difference that first set off my coworker, and has the rest of us wondering.
The first pic shows the labels on the two units (serial numbers blotted)
Note that the upper label looks great, but this is on the light weight one, so we're scratching our heads even more - Cisco even said the serial was okay, but serials can be copied. What's even weirder is that the logo on the lower one actually looks cheesier when you get really close in.
The next picture is the sides - once the weight made us look, we then started to notice more interesting little things about these:
The light weight XFP has obvious flashing on the sides, on both sides in fact, where you can see it was cast in a large mold, broken, and finished poorly with a cheap foam gasket and a large thick faceplate. The heavy XFP has a beautiful finish on it, the parts fit better, smaller gaps in the case, the faceplate is thinner and the gasket is a higher quality foam with a conductive steel sheath. The plastic components on both are impeccable - nothing obvious, however, there are mold marks (good ones) on the heavyweight XFP which indicate higher quality manufacturing controls. Also note that the lock pins on the light weight model are much sloppier in design when compared to the heavy weight.
Now some folks might call me nit-picky, but screws are something I take notice of as well.
The picture on the left is the light-weight XFP - and it's got phillips head screws on it. The other one has torx head screws - and they're recessed too. Much higher quality on the heavy one here in my opinion.
The last picture to share is the edge connector on the cards:
Now call me picky again, but here if you look close, you'll see on the left-hand side, the circuit card on the light-weight XFP seems to have a glossy epoxy coating on it - the four round solder pads above the last few pings show "dimpling" where the epoxy coating seems to be dented in. On the heavy weight XFP, the board has a consistent, flat non-glossy finish - the leads are clear, the pins appear to etched with better quality, Etc. Etc.
Now here's the question: Until Cisco comes back with an answer on this, there seems to be nobody out there saying definitively "here's how to spot bogus Cisco stuff" - and this is there I'm hoping to hear from you!
Update: 2/22/2011 - So, our Cisco SE was on site today and we brought this to him - as it turns out, the upper logo that appears on the XFP stickers is the newer logo - the darker logo on the bottom (heavy) XFP is actually an older logo design - pre 2005 apparently.
From a design perspective, these are drastically different XFP designs, however, one thing was pointed out by our rep. If you have support, call the TAC, and the XFP's are appearing as Cisco in the IOS, then they're supported and it doesn't matter if they're clone hardware or not.
Another item to note: newer designs generally have lighter heatsinks and less insulation because newer chip designs are less noisy/leaky and generate less waste heat as well.
Being paranoid, we've contacted Cisco, but they've been less than helpful in anything other than verifying that both have valid serial numbers so far - but we've escalated the discussion to see if anyone in the community can help!
Here they are:
Of the two XFP's above, the upper one weighs in (unofficially) as about one ounce - very light indeed. The lower unit has substantially more mass to it - it weighs in (unofficially) at 3-4 ounces - it's much heavier and feels more solid - it was this difference that first set off my coworker, and has the rest of us wondering.
The first pic shows the labels on the two units (serial numbers blotted)
The next picture is the sides - once the weight made us look, we then started to notice more interesting little things about these:
The light weight XFP has obvious flashing on the sides, on both sides in fact, where you can see it was cast in a large mold, broken, and finished poorly with a cheap foam gasket and a large thick faceplate. The heavy XFP has a beautiful finish on it, the parts fit better, smaller gaps in the case, the faceplate is thinner and the gasket is a higher quality foam with a conductive steel sheath. The plastic components on both are impeccable - nothing obvious, however, there are mold marks (good ones) on the heavyweight XFP which indicate higher quality manufacturing controls. Also note that the lock pins on the light weight model are much sloppier in design when compared to the heavy weight.
Now some folks might call me nit-picky, but screws are something I take notice of as well.
The picture on the left is the light-weight XFP - and it's got phillips head screws on it. The other one has torx head screws - and they're recessed too. Much higher quality on the heavy one here in my opinion.
The last picture to share is the edge connector on the cards:
Now here's the question: Until Cisco comes back with an answer on this, there seems to be nobody out there saying definitively "here's how to spot bogus Cisco stuff" - and this is there I'm hoping to hear from you!
Update: 2/22/2011 - So, our Cisco SE was on site today and we brought this to him - as it turns out, the upper logo that appears on the XFP stickers is the newer logo - the darker logo on the bottom (heavy) XFP is actually an older logo design - pre 2005 apparently.
From a design perspective, these are drastically different XFP designs, however, one thing was pointed out by our rep. If you have support, call the TAC, and the XFP's are appearing as Cisco in the IOS, then they're supported and it doesn't matter if they're clone hardware or not.
Another item to note: newer designs generally have lighter heatsinks and less insulation because newer chip designs are less noisy/leaky and generate less waste heat as well.
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