Dedicated Servers : Fiber Help, I’m getting down right desperate!

Theplanet is the world’s most popular provider of cheap, fast and best dedicated servers at an affordable price and godddy is the leading domain name registrar for all the domains hosted on these servers.

This dedicated server discussion started by BlueFusion on 20 July 2007

I’m really hoping someone with some knowledge in the datacenter can help me out here as I am having some issues while trying to learn more about networking.

A quick review…
I bought this Foundry ServerIron FBSLB24 with an F2GE gigabit SX fiber module a few weeks ago. I have been playing with it and want to colocate it in the near future along with some servers, but for now it’s just to learn some new things about networking and the hardware.

This week, I got myself a Netgear GS716T Gigabit ProSafe Smart Switch with 2 mini-GBIC SPF ports. To fill those ports, I bought 2 of these SPF modules. And finally, to do some fiber connections I got 2x 1m multi-mode 50/125 SC-LC fiber cables.

So I put it all together and hoped it would all just work. Nope. Now here is the problem I face: When I connect the SPF modules on the Netgear to the F2GE ports on the ServerIron, the ServerIron detects a link, but the Netgear does not. I tried different port settings at both ends, swapping cables around, restarting both switches, etc. No luck. I also can visually see the red light through the fiber cables from both switches. All of the fiber devices are supposed to support SX MM 50/62.5 fiber cables, so I am at a loss. Is there a trick to this fiber stuff that anyone can share? I don’t have any other devices so I can’t test with any other equipment.

Any tips, tricks, help, or attempt to help GREATLY appreciated. I want to figure this stuff out and diagnose if there’s bad hardware or what before I ship anything to a datacenter.

And if you want to see how they’re plugged in and stuff, here’s the relevant images:

You can discuss this at the planet forums or click here to get a dedicated server from theplanet.com for less than $50