Need help with Route 10 SFP connecting to my server

Routers
1

Hi, I recently got a route 10 I’m trying to have an SFP connection (WAN2) to my server, I’m using a NICGIGA x520-1s 10G ethernet PCIE card and a 10GTek SFP+ DAC cable.

I’m seeing that the activity light is on sometimes and goes off, and earlier in the day I was able to get the router to identify my device however I wasn’t able to connect to it via my server’s web interface. I also forced my server’s IP for that interface to match DHCP, but if I just use DHCP on my server it won’t get an IP from the route 10, I’ve also tried a second identical NIC card to ensure that’s not the issue. I’ve also tried setting /cfg/sfp1.txt to 10gbase_r but still no luck

on route 10 via ssh

root@Main:~# ethtool -I eth5
Settings for eth5:
Supported ports: [ FIBRE ]
Supported link modes: 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
10000baseT/Full
2500baseT/Full
5000baseT/Full
Supported pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Supported FEC modes: Not reported
Advertised link modes: 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
10000baseT/Full
2500baseT/Full
5000baseT/Full
Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised FEC modes: Not reported
Speed: Unknown!
Duplex: Unknown! (255)
Port: MII
PHYAD: 31
Transceiver: external
Auto-negotiation: off
Link detected: no

2

Update: NICGIGA x520-1s doesn’t properly work with the alta labs equipment, However the Genuine intel card this is based out of Intel X520-DA1 and X520-DA2 will work.

A note on X520-DA1/X520-DA2 If you are using generic optical transceivers(Non-intel branded) on these cards, you need to make a modification to the card’s EEPROM firmware to make it work with generic modules, however if you are using DAC cables it should work out of box, It’s pretty simple to get it working with generic SFP+ transceivers a couple Linux commands you need to run.

sudo ethtool -e INTERFACE offset 0x58 length 1

Should output a table of which value should be 0xfc, and you want to change it to 0xfd by running this command

sudo ethtool -E INTERFACE magic 0x10fb8086 offset 0x58 value 0xfd

Verify that it’s set to 0xfd by running the first command again and run the following or reboot

sudo ip link set INTERFACE up

and Voila! Everything should be working now

Source: Intel X520: Enabling unsupported transceivers

Thanks to @Alta-Anthony for his assistance on getting this working

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