WS-6-MINI Dieing in Sun + Box not UV Proof

[mhoppes]

Chris, you know I love you and your products - but this one is starting to let me down.

The WS-6-MINIs that I have in outdoor locations are shutting down as soon as the sun hits the box. I've tried painting them white - no change. What can be done?

Additionally, the boxes being sold to house the switches do not appear to be UV proof. After a summer in the sun they have already yellowed worse than a Ubiquiti radio in the same time frame.

I'm seriously considering MikroTik RouterBoxes to replace these things, but I'd love to stick with one product -- any solution?

[Dave]

The WS-6-MINIs that I have in outdoor locations are shutting down as soon as the sun hits the box. I've tried painting them white - no change. What can be done?

Matt

What do you mean by shutting down? The mini goes offline, ports are shut down, etc?

Have you measured what the temperature is inside the plastic enclosure when the unit fails, and or do you know what the mini is reporting as its CPU/PHYBoard temps, and what sort of load do you have on it in regards to POE devices?

We have sold over 10,000 of the mini's and rarely do we have any heat issues with them....

Thanks.

Dave

[sirhc]

Matt we spoke about this on the phone just the other day?

I told you the box is made by Tycon which clearly states this on our site, we simply resell it as a box that seems to work well for many other people and they asked us to carry it. We purchase them from Streakwave and simply sell them here as a convenience. In fact I think you were one that had asked us to carry them since you bought switches from us and that way you did not have to pay double shipping from 2 places.

The box yellowing is NOT an indication of not being UV rated, cracking or brittleness would be. I have had these box out in service for going on 3 years now with no problems other than a little yellow which is typical for any white plastic. I can show you pictures of YELLOW UBT hear that is real dingy yellow, that is normal discoloration for white plastic.

Dave is correct that there are well over 10,000 of these switches installed all over the world without issue in warmer environments than central PA.

Maybe you could provide more information to help us.

Please post up screen grabs of the following TABs:
Status
Ports
Device/Configuration
Device/Status

Make sure we can tell what is on each port.

Explain more what happens and what you do to recover from the event.

Explain what is powering the unit.

Now it is possible the units you have are from the batch that had defective 3.3V CAPs?
You could try and swap them out and RMA them to us to check out since we are so close.
The 3.3V defective CAP issue was talked about a lot, not saying this is the cause but could be. This issue "could" exhibit itself in heat but not real likely but a possibility.

But as I said more info is the first step in being able to help you. This could be other things than the unit locking up, could even be packet lock.

[mhoppes]

The WS-6-MINIs that I have in outdoor locations are shutting down as soon as the sun hits the box. I've tried painting them white - no change. What can be done?

Matt

What do you mean by shutting down? The mini goes offline, ports are shut down, etc?

Have you measured what the temperature is inside the plastic enclosure when the unit fails, and or do you know what the mini is reporting as its CPU/PHYBoard temps, and what sort of load do you have on it in regards to POE devices?

We have sold over 10,000 of the mini's and rarely do we have any heat issues with them....

Thanks.

Dave

I don't know enough about UV to know for sure how to respond, but if you're saying that's not a symptom of UV issues I'll believe you.

The Mini will go offline and everything attached to the mini will go offline. However, when you go check it, the mini is still powered up and providing power to the devices attached to it. All Ethernet ports are lit up for power/Ethernet, however, nothing responds to pings or passes traffic.

Shading the switch for about 3 minutes while a cool breeze blows through will cause traffic to restore. Remove the shade and the traffic stops. I don't know the reported temperature because I only yesterday managed to get on site while things were failed to investigate and once I determined it was a heat issue built a sun-shade over the box to restore service.

I have 3 Ubiquiti NanoStations connected and the device is being powered by 1 Ubiquiti 48 volt PoE injector.

[lligetfa]

I have 3 Ubiquiti NanoStations connected and the device is being powered by 1 Ubiquiti 48 volt PoE injector.

What model of PoE, how many watts, how many pairs does it power? The 50V airFiber PoE is what is required which powers all pairs.

[mhoppes]

It is an airfiber PoE.

[sirhc]

I would suggest RMA, it happens but before I would RMA it I would swap it out with another WS-6-MINI and make sure it is a defective unit or possibly something else.

Swapping a unit out is the easiest way to determine if the issue is hardware or something else.

I would still like to see the screenshots please. I can not help you without information to go off of.

[MichaelBrandl]

Hi,
No problems with UV,
But we have some WS-6's which seem to go offline if they get very hot and have several wireless connections.
We had this in a Box where we had Three Sector Radio's, as well as a Titanium M5 to Feed the Box.
Once we swapped the M5 for an AF5X, the switch started going offline.
When we say offline, not completely, it just stopped passing data, as we had access to the AF5X but nothing else. The AF5X also showed Link.
We've so far had this there and also another location, where we changed from 2 -> 3 Radio's and had the same thing.
A reboot would fix this but not for very long, maybe a week or two.
Then we replaced them with a larger model with a fan and these seem to be working great, no issues so far since for either.
Do you think this could be a similar issue?
Thanks
Mike

[sirhc]

Hi,
No problems with UV,
But we have some WS-6's which seem to go offline if they get very hot and have several wireless connections.
We had this in a Box where we had Three Sector Radio's, as well as a Titanium M5 to Feed the Box.
Once we swapped the M5 for an AF5X, the switch started going offline.
When we say offline, not completely, it just stopped passing data, as we had access to the AF5X but nothing else. The AF5X also showed Link.
We've so far had this there and also another location, where we changed from 2 -> 3 Radio's and had the same thing.
A reboot would fix this but not for very long, maybe a week or two.
Then we replaced them with a larger model with a fan and these seem to be working great, no issues so far since for either.
Do you think this could be a similar issue?
Thanks
Mike

What POE option were you using for the AF5X radio? Hopefully 48VH or 48V and not 24V?

Since there is a known UBNT Flow Control issue with AF, AFX, and airMAX AC radios you need to make sure you are using the latest firmware with Flow Control Pause Frame Storm protect enable which is on the Device/Configuration TAB.

If the problem still persists try disable Flow Control on the ports and see what happens as this could be a packet lock from Flow Control Pause Frame Storms.


Lastly it could be a defect 3.3V CAP in which case you need to RMA the unit.

[mhoppes]

Chris,
This is the exact same issue I'm having. The equipment attached to the switch stays up, but the switch just stops passing traffic until it cools down.