The first thing to notice is it is of the same solid construction as all of the other Netonix switches and it looks and drives very similar to many of the other models, with the exception of the two DC power ports on the front.
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While the WS-12-250-DC is not a rack mountable switch, I couldn't help but notice it has 4 holes, which appear as though a properly sized rack ear could be attached to make this rack mountable!
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On the interface, it's very similar to the other switches.... with a very changes:
* The top right shows an "Input Voltage" so you can see your battery or power plant voltage.
* There is a new tab "Power" at the top.
- main tab
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Under the Ports tab you can see that PoE now shows you the amperage draw that's available for each voltage selection. This switch does both 24 and 48 volts. Also available is "PS" or "PoE Smart" which shuts down PoE on a port if there is no link detected. This helps prevent frying devices which should not have PoE sent to them.
- ports tab
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The "Power" tab is the newest tab and really has the settings for this switch that can make it shine. Here, we can set a warning voltage to alert if power gets too low, as well as set the voltage at which the switch will shut itself down, reducing power draw, and wait for the "Wakeup voltage" to be met before coming back on-line. This is useful to keep your battery bank from drawing down too far, or if you have other devices you want to keep running, besides the switch.
- power tab
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Additionally, each PoE port can be set with a priority so that as voltage on the input leg of power drops, you can turn off non-critical radios to keep everything else running, and then as power returns (voltage) bring them back up. This is useful at solar sites where you might wish to disable a HICAP backhaul (e.g. AF24) in favor of less bandwidth (RocketM5) but also less power draw, if the battery bank is getting low.
Finally, the Status tab shows all kinds of new information such as power supply temp, supply efficiency, and input and output voltages.
- status tab
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Overall - another quality product form Netonix - Great job Chris, Dave, and Eric!
