I might be overthinking this a bit… but why is the seemingly critical ‘ground pin’ missing from most Mikrotik PoE setups?
Wouldn’t it be more expensive?
Agreed. But wouldn’t it be a good standard?
Low end devices maybe should be sold with it, but not with netmetals…
Perfect segway to my next question; what are you guys using for PoE? Are you guys sticking to a particular brand of gear?
Passive/active? Thoughts?
PoE is supposed to be isolated. There is no “ground wire” in PoE. The device should be grounded itself.
Then why are other vendors grounding from the power cord?
Some powersupplies use a ground to enable better filtering of common-mode interference on the power
line. There are advantages and disadvantages to doing this. Note, for example, that a PC (which uses this method)
that is connected to an ungrounded socket will have its case “floating” at half the mains voltage.
An outdoor WiFi AP will always have a separate ground terminal, even when the indoor power supply has ground
as well. You will probably find that the two are not directly connected.