DC Switch WS-8-250-DC ethernet up and down

[Dave]

Chris, he did say 12 volt DC site.

But yes, unless the Switch Chassis ground lug is hooked up, any issues like this are not valid.

[sirhc]

Chris, he did say 12 volt DC site.

But yes, unless the Switch Chassis ground lug is hooked up, any issues like this are not valid.

I thought he was using 12 volts at his car next to tower to test with?

[kbloch]

Sorry lots of questions in between my answers.

The DC power is +12 VDC with its outputs isolated from ground.

Site has 120 VAC input power. The AC power has been a problem with occasional outages lasting from several hours to days. These have happened several times per year. The site is primarily used for our Voice radio system but we recently added a pair of Rocket AC radios to function as a bridge to an office that had been on T1 circuits. The Rocket's and a Toughswitch were installed in June of this year and have worked without problem when we have had AC power.

The voice radio repeater has the option of working from either AC or DC power or can be plugged into both. This equipments DC requirement is for 12 VDC (13.5 actual voltage) power when connected to DC power. In order to have one battery backup that will power both the Voice radio and the network equipment I purchased the WS-8-250-DC switch to replace the toughswitch. This was preferred over using a UPS as we could add as many batteries as needed. Also since each battery is individually connected to a fuse panel they can be removed and replaced one at a time without disrupting power.

We have a samlex DC power supply/battery charger that is charging four deep cycle 12 VDC batteries. All of the equipment is brand new and purchased in the last few months. Switch, batteries, battery charger, radio repeater etc all connected to a fuse panel. Each device can be powered off by removing its AC power or its fuse or both.


The switch was configured in my office to provide 24 VDC POE output on ports 3 and 4. All other ports are enabled and are set to defaults. There are no vlans or any other requirements so the switch is very basic in setup. The switch works as expected in my office or when at least half a mile or so away from this site.


I have tried the following;

All devices powered up and connected to the same DC panel. Switch has its ground lug connected to the equipment rack which is grounded to the main building ground. Ohm meter check from equipment rack to building ground shows 0 ohms. Ground wire is heavy 4 gauge wire. The DC panel is electrically isolated from the equipment rack.

Switch has one ethernet connection that is connected to the Toughswitch. The two ports that are setup for POE did not have any equipment connected as we were verifying the switch is working prior to moving the two Rocket radios to the switch. Have tried having PC's ethernet cable directly connected to the switch but it would not stay up and connected. PC is connected to the Toughswitch and its port stays up without any problems.

One at a time I have removed the power from all devices except the Netonix switch.
Have tried the switch with and without its ground lug connected. The ground lug was connected to a rack screw and this was checked with an ohm meter and had 0 ohms resistance to the ground point on the rack.
Have tried the switch connected directly to a single battery as the only device connected.
Have tried the switch connected to the same power supply that I used in the office Astron model SS-25M. Power supply connected to AC power. Tried this in two separate outlets one that has a Tripplite power strip with surge suppression and filtering the other just a building provided outlet.
Have tried the switch connected only to a battery and while holding the switch so that it was not in contact with any other metal. The switch normally sites on a metal shelf in the equipment rack.
Moved the switch and Astron power supply to my vehicle and tried to run with the inverter.

Only when I drove down and away from the site did the switch start to function normally. I estimate I was about half a mile away from the site when I retested and it started working. I tried at a couple of closer distances but it still would not work.

Lastly this site is about a three hour drive from my office and I have already made two trips for this problem. The first trip was to install the equipment and the second to try to troubleshoot why the switch would not work. This kind of limits my abilities to try to do any quick tests to see what might be wrong due to cost and time constraints.

[Dave]

thanks for your detailed report, appreciated.

exactly what are the symptoms as relates to shutdowns...does the switch come on (front panel green power light on), and then go off for a few seconds & repeat this cycle?

Dave

[Dave]

this is gonna stop me from being able to sleep as we at Netonix don't like customers having problems & this is a weird one....

[kbloch]

I have not noticed the green power light on the switch to ever go off then back on. Mostly the switch will start and the green light will come on. A few times when trying to power cycle the switch the green light did not come on and we had to power cycle a second time.

The ethernet ports do not stay up long enough to get a DHCP ip address or even to show up in the mac table of the Toughswitch that it is connected.

The ethernet ports will come on for just a second or so then go back off again. I have tried all of the ports except for ports 3 and 4 which were setup for POE out.

Can't access the log on the switch while at the site as it does not stay up long enough.

[kbloch]

I would not speculate that the problem exists in any switch other then the one I have.. It also may be something very specific to this site as it has many different tenants from private industry to local, state and federal government.

[Dave]

ok again thanks for the effort, we will take this offline & get to the bottom of it with your help...Dave