So I’ve been having an issue with losing connectivity to one of my backhauls, a NetMetal5. I’ve exhausted about everything I can think of, short of replacing the POE switch powering it. The switch is a Ubiquiti ES-16-150. I’ve replaced cable ends, tested cable, replaced NetMetal5 with a brand new one, changed ports on the POE switch, updated firmware on everything. Just out of the blue, two months after putting this POE switch in, I start dropping pings to the NetMetal. Pings to the switch are solid though. Check logs in the NetMetal and see eth1 up, down, up, down. Just keeps going on and on. It cuts out for about 5-20 seconds at a time. The period between drops is random as well. It may run steady for hours before dropping, or it may fun for minutes before dropping pings. Normally between 2-10 pings missed, but that’s enough to interrupt about anything you are doing online. The NetMetal doesn’t reboot or loose wireless connectivity.
Now I think I have an idea… I was checking power cost(power consumption needed from POE switch port) on all the radios I have connected to the ES. I tallied it up and my max total load is 77.5 watts. That’s well within the total power consumption allowed by the ES, which is (this is an assumption based on, total power used with POE-total power used without POE, because it wasn’t specified on the spec sheet) a little over 100 watts. BUT, the per port max passive power rating is only 17 watts. The NetMetal5 spec sheets says it uses up to 19 watts.
Now my question… Would this cause interrupts in LAN connectivity to the NetMetal5? Could this be causing my dropped pings? If it’s possible, how would I tell for sure?