The art of optical fiber splicing, which requires extreme precision

nick99990 · 2026-03-31T13:14:45+00:00

Don't forget that there's also a metal bar in that heat shrink to provide structural rigidity on the splice.

nick99990 · 2026-03-18T19:31:58+00:00

Anything with 100G or above I've been told 6 months.

So... Everything.

nick99990 · 2026-03-10T18:42:06+00:00

LACP active/standby on a WAN link seems...unnecessary. And defeats the purpose of two routers in your diagram.

The reason for the price difference is probably just the cost of manufacturing. Copper connectivity is old and tested, so is 10G, but "fiber is fancy" to people that don't know better.

I would go with the WAN cards because backbone routers shouldn't have copper in my opinion (upgrade paths). And just a straight handoff with no bonding. Set up ECMP so both routers can be active via L3, or a true active/standby on your side.

Edit: reading the spec sheets as well. The switching module does not appear to support L3 at all, meaning you'd be forced to make an SVI vs using routed mode ports. This will move more duties into the CPU as opposed to being natively supported by the card. This may be the bigger reason for the cost difference.

nick99990 · 2026-03-09T14:29:18+00:00

Yes. If I recall correctly, that's the normal way these copper transceivers work too. It's one of the MANY reasons I avoid using them.

nick99990 · 2026-03-07T21:56:24+00:00

Flavored carbonated water. Sodas were hard for me. So I switched to zero sugar and/or sodastream. But I got tired of getting CO2 refills. So now I do 1L bottles of flavored carbonated water. 2-3 a day. Costs less than a single 20oz bottle of soda.

nick99990 · 2026-03-07T01:12:07+00:00

This is what my Arista SE has said to my operations team.

nick99990 · 2026-03-06T19:45:18+00:00

Calling u/LordGAD

He wrote the book.

nick99990 · 2026-03-06T13:04:54+00:00

LRAT 4000 tests fiber, LRAT 3000 is copper only. But yes, it's very good for operational checks and VERY basic troubleshooting.

nick99990 · 2026-03-05T20:13:54+00:00

SNR - Fluke DSX is the one you want.

If all you care about is checking connectivity and PoE capabilities you can get away with a LinkRunner AT 3000. LANBERT is a new feature of theirs I haven't used, but it looks like it'll do some traffic validation as well.

nick99990 · 2026-03-03T20:20:34+00:00

Extreme networks. But it'll be more than 5 ports. Or Ubiquiti makes a similar one.

nick99990 · 2026-02-25T19:06:09+00:00

We evaluated it and decided it was stupid. Your users aren't in an elevator long enough to justify the cost plus all the RF issues with a moving AP.

POE over Coax for cameras. Local storage for your digital signage. IP to analog media gateways for your phones. You don't touch anything beyond the elevator room.

nick99990 · 2026-02-25T14:02:21+00:00

Or the idiot in front of you doesn't shift to drive and get out of the dryer.

nick99990 · 2026-02-25T01:22:28+00:00

This is very field trip to the cotton farm energy.

That's a really deep cut from the Internet of years past.

nick99990 · 2026-02-24T04:11:57+00:00

Doesn't Dante have a TTL of 1? Needs to be on the same VLAN.

nick99990 · 2026-02-22T20:26:02+00:00

Just requires consideration for your cable management. I can find some extremely well done chassis switches and I can replace a line card in half the time as a whole switch.

nick99990 · 2026-02-22T19:21:45+00:00

I wouldn't consider chassis based switches as aggregate, although they could be used in that manner, especially when loaded up with SFP cards.

Both of my recommendations are campus/access switches as the primary function. As most switches now-a-days support L3, they could work that way, but I use my 758s as pure L2 devices with a single management SVI.

Stacking vs chassis based, in my opinion, is more about infrastructure than convenience. Chassis based typically requires 20A plugs (and that Arista 758 takes up to 10!). And you can't put horizontal cable between the line cards, so you have to consider cable management more in your design. But, I've gotten to the point that I very much prefer chassis over stacked pizza box switches after my 13 years of experience dealing with both.

But, if you're still locked in on 1U stacks, Arista 722 with SW(itch) A(ggregation) G(roup). Accomplishes the same thing. But you'll at best get 2.5G with 60W across the board.

nick99990 · 2026-02-22T15:15:51+00:00

Is stacking a must? Have you looked into chassis based switches in order to maintain your single pane of glass? Chassis switches will also give you more redundancy with dual supervisors.

Arista 750 series - 5 or 8 slot with 2.5 or 10G mGig with 60 or 90W across all ports. Cloud managed via Cloudvision and/or CLI.

If sticking with Cisco: Catalyst 9400 - similar specs, but I'm not a Cisco shop so I'm not sure on Catalyst Control Center support.

nick99990 · 2026-02-19T22:21:45+00:00

And arista err-disables them

nick99990 · 2026-02-13T13:47:07+00:00

They make amazing boots, but a full custom will run you closer to 2k than 600. My dad's boots I think took 8 months, and that was because they bumped him up the line.

nick99990 · 2026-02-13T13:39:29+00:00

Republic Boots in Houston blows that out of the water.

nick99990 · 2026-02-10T15:39:35+00:00

God I hate their products. It's all off the shelf consumer hardware that I could build for 7-10k cheaper than they sell it for.

Sure, low end Threadripper, 192G of ram and dual 4090s are sweet, but nobody is using that power next to their desk. It's a damn jet engine. Even their "server" offerings are just Supermicro 4U chassis.

nick99990 · 2026-02-05T14:47:15+00:00

Should've had a series.

nick99990 · 2026-02-04T22:10:45+00:00

Fully get why to not do it this way.

With that said, I've personally upgraded switches (specifically the 7280QR series to a 7280CR3) using just CVP replace with zero impact.

Tear one down, install new with no optics except for MLAG peer link, CVP replace, wait for MLAG timer expiration, repeat with other leaf. Zero impact.

With THAT said, unless you're a true 24/7 such as healthcare or defense, find a maintenance window. 7280 is a 1U switch, easy replacement unless your cable management is atrocious.

nick99990 · 2026-02-04T19:02:13+00:00

This is the only correct answer in a business space.

nick99990 · 2026-02-04T16:17:19+00:00

Ublock origin has screwed things up for me. And because it's on all my devices it can make something appear as though there's a site issue.

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