A few months ago I stumbled on a tweet pointing out a kind of SFP optic that claimed to be smart, made by a Russian company Plumspace. After going thr

Ghost in the ethernet optic

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2022-01-13 12:30:11

A few months ago I stumbled on a tweet pointing out a kind of SFP optic that claimed to be smart, made by a Russian company Plumspace. After going through their Smart SFP product listings I was on-board and decided I needed to have some of them.

You see, Smart SFP’s are a bit of a terrifying concept. SFP’s are (until now apparently) actually quite simple devices that “simply” take input electrical signals and turn them into optical signalling, or carry them down a Direct Attach Cable (DAC)

The proposed smart SFP said, “Hey there is plenty of space in this thing! Why not also put a little FPGA, and an ARM core that can share the ethernet link, that way we can do more things!”

After some discussion over email with Plumspace, I ordered 3 (2 going to my similarly interested friends) at around the cost of 150 USD per optic. After some shipping+brexit drama I had a smart-sfp of my own sitting in front of me.

I want to point out that while this whole post may read like a sponsored post, it’s not! I just find the concept of these devices so immensely curious and cursed I feel the need to document their existance and feature set.