Hello, First of all I would like to say hello as I am a fairly new user. I am a student who is just taking the first steps in the world of Microtik and networking topics.
Combining business with pleasure I wanted to build a wifi network at my parents’ house to practice. I bought a budget model Routerboard hEX PoE lite (RB750UPr2), I would like to connect two Cisco Meraki MR16 APs to it, unfortunately I’m not able to power them over PoE. According to the specifications, both devices are PoE compatible. However, the AP won’t switch on in any way. With a regular power supply everything works fine, the PoE shows in the inteface tab current_to_low and 29.4V as voltage.
Please advise what I’m doing wrong. I’ve tried changing the power supply to a bigger one but it doesn’t help because the maximum is 30V and I have one. I’m thinking of buying a PoE injector to connect power to eth1 port (let’s say 48V or bigger power supply), is there a chance AP will boot?
Quick search says that your APs want standard 802.3af PoE, but according to https://mikrotik.com/product/RB750UPr2, this device has only non-standard passive PoE. You’d need e.g. https://mikrotik.com/product/RB960PGS, that has the real thing (but if I understand it correctly, some devices may have problem even with that, because of the mode B).
I typed this command. The router is connected to a 30v power supply on eth4 port I have my laptop plugged in, on eth5 port I have Meraki AP plugged in. After this command the AP still won't wake up but instead of current_to_low I get the message waiting_for_load and so on for 15 minutes. Unless I misunderstood your answer in the sense that I should first get a 48V power supply and a PoE injector plugged into eth1 and then run the test.
For me, unfortunately, it did not help. Let’s consider another scenario. I’ll buy a PoE Injector and power supply for say 50V I plug it to eth1 now the question is whether on eth2-5 ports I will get this 50V or at least 33V? I read that some Cisco products need at least 33V to boot properly.
I use Meraki enterprise access points at home and can confirm that they require 802.3af (smart PoE) as opposed to the dumb PoE that the hEX supplies. You will need a 802.3af PoE injector.