STARPOD FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions of Starview Products and Services

Why is it called STARPOD?

STARPOD stands for Starview Programmable Optical Device. It allows the programming of the Starview Transceiver modules remotely by the user themselves. Traditionally all Transceiver modules are programmed in the factory during production. However, when the user decides to change or upgrade their network equipment to a different vendor, the transceiver module is not reusable.

STARPOD stands for Starview Programmable Optical Device. It allows programming of the Starview Transceiver modules remotely by the user themselves. Traditionally all Transceiver modules are programmed in factory during production. However when user decides to change or upgrade their network equipment to a different vendor, the transceiver module is not reusable.

STARPOD is suitable for all network users that uses Transceiver modules in their networking devices. STARPOD gives them the flexibility and versatility of deploying Transceiver modules to any of their network equipment, thus saving time and money. Nowadays Transceiver modules form a major cost to the total Cost of Ownership. STARPOD has the potential to overcome the cost of investment and allows flexibility of usage of the transceiver modules to work with any manufacturers’ networking equipment.

The advantages of using STARPOD are:
a) Allows flexibility of reprogramming Starview transceiver modules remotely
b) Faster response time to integrate the existing transceiver modules to support various network equipment
c) Better Return of Investment for Transceiver modules
d) Ease of use and do not require any trained personnel

STARPOD allows programming of the Starview Transceiver module to work with major equipment vendor. Most of the Network Equipment Vendor will encode information into the EEPROM of the Transceiver module so that it will reject any 3rd party devices. STARPOD is able to decode and overwrite the information into the EEPROM of the Starview Transceiver module so that these Network Equipment vendors will see the Transceiver module corresponds to their equipment coding to work normally.

STARPOD supports equipment coding such as CISCO, Juniper, Alcatel Lucent, Extreme Networks, Huawei, HP, Arista Networks, Intel, EXFO, Viavi, Anritsu, ATI, Netscout, Brocade, Ericsson, RAD, Avaya and many more. If the equipment is not within this list, Starview is able to decode an original transceiver module to re-program into the Starview transceiver module.

Every manufacturer has their own password protection on their transceiver modules. Likewise Starview has our own password protection of our EEPROM embedded in the Transceiver module. The password protection on the EEPROM is to disallow any change of the Transceiver information by unauthorized access. Hence the STARPOD can only program the Starview Transceiver modules.

The user will simply insert the module into STARPOD and select the preferred equipment coding in the drop-down menu. Upon selection of the coding, the reprogramming process will take less than 1 minute. If the coding is not in the drop-down menu, the user must send a request via our helpdesk or call our Starview authorized agent or reseller to provide the following information:
• Equipment vendor and part no of the Network Equipment to be used
• Part no and Serial no of the transceiver module to be reprogrammed
You may be required to have an original transceiver that works in the host equipment for STARPOD to read. After we have decoded what STARPOD has read, we will provide a file for reprogramming to proceed.

Should the user want to revert to the previous code, the same process of re-programming applies. However, if the reprogramming was done via a separate file, then reversion of coding is not possible. If the coding programmed into the transceiver module does not work, you can contact our helpdesk. Starview provides money back guarantee for all our transceiver modules.

No, STARPOD does not require that the Starview transceiver module is within the warranty period in order to do re-programming.

STARPOD makes programming so easy that it can be used by anyone. Other manufacturer’s programming board requires you to understand the complexities of the definition of each variant of transceivers, down to the bit level, making it only suitable for use by transceiver design engineers.

Starview has a team of trained engineers with many years of experience to decode the manufacturers’ network equipment code. We have understood the mechanism of various network equipment manufacturers on their coding process and is able to re-construct the coding into our STARPOD.

STARPOD2 stands for STARPOD version 2. The new version supports the latest optics of SFP/ SFP+/ SFP28/ QSFP+/ QSFP28 and QSFP56. The STARPOD version 1 supports SFP, SFP+ and XFP transceiver modules. Version 1 is already EOL due to the obsolescence of the XFP module. Starview shall continue to support both STARPOD version 1 and version 2. STARPOD does not matter if the transceiver module is copper, singlemode, multimode or WDM. STARPOD will re-program the EEPROM in these transceiver modules as long as it is supported by the form factor.

Currently STARPOD only works on Windows platform.

No. STARPOD only accesses the information in the EEPROM and does not affect the configurations of the transmission and receiver components of the transceiver module.

New versions of STARPOD software will be updated in our website http://www.starviewtech.net

STARPOD supports wavelength tuning for DWDM tunable SFP+ module. It is capable to tune the DWDM wavelengths of the DWDM tunable SFP+ module to the desired wavelength without interruption to the main DWDM equipment. This flexibility to re-program the transceiver module allows the user to connect the module to interwork with multiple leading vendors. The user will save time and money to support the wide varieties of networking equipment today.