Had my $300 switch fail at a Buckhead job site yesterday

Was setting up a 48-port PoE for a law firm's new office when the whole stack just died mid-config, so I had to rerun every cable and hard reset each device one by one has anyone else dealt with a brand new switch bricking like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_rose8d ago

Friend of mine had a similar thing happen with a new Cisco switch at a dental office last month. Plugged it in, started the config, and the whole thing just went dark with a burned plastic smell. Took them two days to get a replacement and re-crimp all the runs.

shane_wilson8d ago

Huh, are you sure it was the switch's fault though? @the_rose, I've seen a dozen times where the real issue was bad power in the building or a fried PoE injector that killed the switch. Your friend could have saved a lot of time by testing the outlet first with a multimeter instead of blaming Cisco. Those dental offices are notorious for having janky wiring from old x-ray machines. Plus re-crimping all the runs sounds like they had bigger problems with their cabling long before that switch showed up.

jessica3318d ago

Ngl, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the whole grounding thing yet. A lot of these office buildings from the 90s have terrible grounding on their electrical systems, especially in the newer retrofitted spaces like Buckhead law firms. If the switch wasn't getting a clean ground reference, that PoE load could have caused voltage spikes that fried the power supply instantly. Happened to me once with a stack of UniFi switches in an old medical building - swapped the outlet, problem gone forever. Might be worth checking if the neutral and ground are bonded properly in that panel before blaming the hardware. Those fancy new switches are sensitive to dirty power way more than people realize.