Cisco Nexus 9000 Series NX-OS Software Upgrade and Downgrade Guide, Release 10.6(x)

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Transceiver firmware upgrades

Updated: February 5, 2026

Overview

This section provides an introduction about transceiver firmware upgrades with NX-OS, and informs about how this upgrade improves performance, addresses issues, ensures compliance, and supports efficient bulk updates for supported models.

Transceiver firmware upgrades are the software upgrades that

  • enhance transceiver performance and resolve known issues

  • are bundled with NX-OS releases,

  • and apply only to supported transceiver models.

The transceiver firmware upgrade feature provides network administrators with the ability to

  • update transceiver firmware to address bugs and security vulnerabilities

  • enhance transceiver performance through firmware optimizations

  • maintain compliance with latest industry standards, and

  • perform bulk firmware updates across multiple interfaces.

One of the ways in which the transceiver firmware upgrade can be performed is by using the NX-OS command framework. This requires careful procedural adherence to avoid disruption and maintain network stability. For more information, see Firmware upgrade using NX-OS commands.

You can upgrade transceiver firmware faster by processing multiple downloads simultaneously. The process involves careful grouping of ports for parallel operations, but ports on the same Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) line are updated sequentially. For more information, see Parallel firmware download.