[SOLVED] SFP (fibre optic) module in Slackware 15

Originally Posted by radboud I will use the interface with a manual configuration yes, but first I am just trying to get a link status reported..

An unconfigured interface in Slackware may not provide a link, if it remains in the "down" state.

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Originally Posted by Ser Olmy An unconfigured interface in Slackware may not provide a link, if it remains in the "down" state.

You are correct, apparently Slackware is different from Ubuntu in this respect.
I am now (in Slackware) seeing the link with the two 850 nm modules both in the PC and interconnected.

Still no luck with the 1310 multi-mode module that I need, but unfortunately I will not be able to do more testing on this system this week.

Thanks for your help so far everybody !

Some interaction with the supplier of the pc and some googling has now led us to believe the controller chip for the SFP modules (type 8086:1536) is not compatible with the lower speed fibre optic modules.

We did get it to work at 1.25 Gbps with 850 nm modules, but not with the lower peed 1310 nm modules that we need.

in the 'product brief' link at https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us...er-i210is.html I found this in the PDF which seems to confirm this:

External Interfaces
PCI Express 2.1
• 2.5 GT/s Support for x1 width (Lane)
Network Interfaces
• MDI (Copper) standard IEEE 802.3 Ethernet interface for 1000BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, and 10BASE-T applications (802.3, 802.3u, and 802.3ab)
• Serializer-Deserializer (SerDes) to support 1000BASE-SX/LX (optical fiber - IEEE 802.3)
• Serializer-Deserializer (SerDes) to support 1000BASE-KX (IEEE 802.3ap) and 1000BASE-BX (PICMIG 3.1) for Gigabit backplane applications
• SGMII (Serial-GMII Specification) interface for SFP (SFP MSA INF-8074i)/external PHY connections

Once again, thanks for all the help and we will use external media converters with these PC's in our project now.

Regards, Radboud