AF5X Connected/Disconnected w/ WS-12-250-DC

[eomedia]

I have an AF5X radio that has been working fine for sometime with no issues, however tonight it started acting up and showing as disconnected even though I can see that there is power to the radio.

If I turn off PoE for a few minutes and then turn it back on the radio will come back online and work from a few minutes to a few hours before disconnecting again.

After this last disconnection I was looking at the radio and it kept switching between a "DOWN" state and a "100M-F" state (shown below) . During this time I was NOT able to access the radio as the state change would change very quickly and never stay on 100M-F for more than a second.

first state

second state


It's a fairly long run but nothing has changed on it anytime recently that should have caused this and the wires check out okay.



After turning PoE off and back on the link will come back up and show the 1G link with flow control active


Then it will go to the standard 1G and be fine until again it just disconnects


When it's up everything looks generally pretty good


It can't be the reason, but it feels like the radio freaks out for a few and then after power cycling it's okay until the next time - randomly in a few minutes or few hours. I'm just looking for ideas here from someone who may have seen something similar

[sirhc]

We just replaced one of our AF5X radios today.

It would stop passing traffic but would send garbage out the Ethernet port.

Replaced with spare all is fine?

Sometimes things just fail, it happens sadly.

[eomedia]

A replacement radio is certainly an option, however this is happening after our little accident over a week ago or so (why I bought the two new switches) and this is a similar repeated situation now.

We had this weird connect/disconnect issue and we thought it was a bad cable so we replaced that. Issue kept happening so we replaced the AF5X radio and it's been working for over a week but is starting to happen again. Seems unlikely (not impossible) to have another bad radio.

[eomedia]

Just noticed this today while monitoring this issue - not sure if it's related or not. However, in port 1 below is an AF5X which is connected to the AF5X which is located at the datacenter and for some reason it's showing 100M-F instead of 1G as it has in the past.
The AF5X in port two which is just a link to another location still shows 1G.

They are both set for AUTO - any ideas whey one would change down?

[lligetfa]

Is there a possible ground loop through the ethernet cable? How well is everything bonded?

[sirhc]

First turn off poe and plug in your laptop to the port to verify switch port is good to link at 1G.

If it links to your laptop at 1G I would suspect cabling first then radio second.

[eomedia]

Not sure i know what you mean by bonded - but the cable's been in place for a few months with no issues, however I could see a potential issue with the cabling here as I just recently had to replace that radio because it got fried but we did not change out the cable.

Unfortunately I can't take that link offline without a planned maintenance window so I'll schedule one and take a look when I can - appreciate the input/suggestions so I can try it out.

[lligetfa]

Here is a good post on grounding and bonding.
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1429

[eomedia]

Thanks for the link on bonding - that very well may have been our issue.

It's been a weird couple of days as the link that was connecting/disconnecting has been stable ("knock on wood") for the past 5 days but it's only connected at a 100M-F link instead of the 1G it was at before. I've turned off POE, rebooted that radio, etc. and it always comes back at 100M-F so no 1G anymore on that port.

I haven't been able to reset the main port link (up at remote location) but when I get a chance I plan on using an open port to test.

A follow up question however, if the link sensor in the Netonix switch was damaged is the only "fix" to replace it locally and ship it back for repair?

[darimar]

Hello,
I've experienced several problems of af5x ethernet link up and down or from 1G to 100M without any apparent cause. After two weeks of investigations, tests and reading some posts on ubnt forum, and after many and many headache, I realized that the main cause is a mechanical problem on af5x ethernet connector...And isn't only a coincidence that with wind and/or mechanical vibrations, the frequency of up-down increases much more.

You can find some videos about this problem on ubnt forum. I'm out of the office now, but as soon as possibile I'll post some photos and screenshot about it and a video in wich I reproduce the problem in my lab (audio is not in english because I made it for my tech staff, but I thinks that also without audio it's understandable).

My temporary and immediate solution is to:

1) well fix cables to avoid vibrations
2) avoid to overcrimp connectors
3) use a wrapper around the cable near the af5x connector into the af5x cage to mantain the connector well inserted ( )

But I've experienced that this issue can be caused also by an electrical cause: using a NOT pure sine wave UPS! I've experienced this issue with WS-12-250-AC and WS-24-400-AC. You can imagine that with a mechanical and electrical cause at the same time the headache is assured!

I think that you don't have to focus your attention on the electrical aspect because you are using Netonix DC version. I had the same problem also on AF5X powered by WS-12-250-DC or WS-8-150-DC, but in this case I had to resolve only the mechanical problem.

Now I don't see any up and down on my Netonix logs since two weeks and I have a 1000M-F stable links...But I'm waiting for next wind-storm ...

To give some numbers: I have 22 AF5X installed on my network and I had serious issue on 12 of them.

Best Regards,
Dario M.