Counterfeit WIC's

I'm looking at purchasing some extra WIC's for my lab. However, I've read quite a bit about counterfeit WIC's in the market. Obviously I started to look on eBay for my first WIC purchase, but I'm not entirely sure where I should actually buy them from.

Anyone have any recommendations?

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Comments

ehnde

I bought mine on ebay and they are "counterfeit". They are for my lab and they were only $5 each....they work perfectly. Check the seller feedback rating, and as long as the card works is there really a problem?

MAC_Addy

ehnde wrote: »

Check the seller feedback rating, and as long as the card works is there really a problem?

I suppose not. I just thought that when I saw 'counterfeit' that it wouldn't work at all.

ehnde

They may be "lower quality" because they are not official cisco parts...but if you're not buying them for production systems I don't see an issue - you just don't get support from Cisco.

jamesleecoleman

I have an article for you if you haven't read it yet.

Counterfeit Fake Cisco WIC-1DSU-T1 V2 Guide

MAC_Addy

Ah - excellent. I appreciate the responce!

QHalo

jamesleecoleman wrote: »

I have an article for you if you haven't read it yet.

Counterfeit Fake Cisco WIC-1DSU-T1 V2 Guide

Yeah, when I was buying WIC's I bought mine specifically from Andover because of that article. No reason to perpetuate the existance of counterfeit equipment.

odysseyelite

I'm kinda curious if the ones I got were fake or not.

MAC_Addy

jamesleecoleman wrote: »

I have an article for you if you haven't read it yet.

Counterfeit Fake Cisco WIC-1DSU-T1 V2 Guide

Ah yes, I read this over the weekend - very informative.

ehnde

It doesn't make sense to pay $50 for an official part if a knock-off works perfectly fine for a lab for $5.

If it's for production, make sure you have an official part.

wastedtime

I am with ehnde. I would never use it in production nor pass it off as the real thing.

odysseyelite

Well I checked mine. I actually had V1 cards. Bought them for 5 bucks on ebay and they checked out as real.

Forsaken_GA

I've seen alot of fake Cisco gear, and most of them appear to work, until you try and put any serious traffic through them.

For a lab, they might be ok. If you start seeing weird things though, keep in mind it might be your hardware, and not your configuration.

As a general rule, do not buy anything that ships from China. However, buying domestically doesn't save you from getting counterfeit. I used to work for a reseller, and we got in a pallet of 'factory-sealed' 1721's (this was about 8 years ago, so 1721's were still useful). I could tell they were fake just from the packaging. The boxes were the wrong color, the labels weren't right. I was given permission to open a few and see if the hardware was actually fake, and it was, and I could prove it - the memory slots were too long, and DIMM's didn't fit. I took pictures, documented every facet proving they were fake, made damn sure management was aware of it.... and they still shipped the entire load to a customer. Burned my blood.

Fortunately, the customer wasn't a moron, and returned them. I didn't hang out with that company much longer, couldn't stomach it when I knew they were shady.

Corndork2

Really -- The fake cards are fine for lab use. But, I would NEVER use them in production. A WIC-1T or WIC-2T should be fine from any manufacturer in the lab. I have a mix of real and fake cisco WIC-1T's and have had no issues. All of my NM modules, and other VIC's are genuine...so I cannot speak for those

jamesleecoleman

I think that you should use the real thing for production and lab. Because the cards are fake, I think that the cards could mess up your gear and you might have to end up buying new routers.