POE Switch Compatible with Balance One

Product Discussion
1

Is there a POE switch that is compatible with the Balance One.

I have run out of ports. I purchased a netgear to run my AP’s but it causes the balance one to constantly reboot.

2

We have employed Buffalo managed POE switches quite successfully (and also without too much thought behind the choice, so think of this simply as a sample point). Paired with Balance Ones, 380s and HD2s.

Z

3

Thanks. Looks like Buffalo is out of the switch business. Checked their site and says “while supplies last” and retailers our showing out of stock.

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4

Yes! https://www.peplink.com/products/sd-switch-series-8-rugged/

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5

@Wayne_Goldstein I’m not sure what you mean by “compatible”. You can use any switch.

I have had poor luck with all brands of POE switches. It seems like the POE portion gets overloaded and burns out the whole thing. We’re just using them for cameras and phones. I switched to using a regular non-POE switch, and a separate POE injector from POE Texas. I haven’t had anything from POE Texas fail but if I do the power adapter is separate and much cheaper to replace than the entire switch.

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6

My home/office setup is this:

The Balance connects to the TPE-TG82g. Two of the AP One Minis are then connected to the TPE-TG82g and receive PoE power. The final connection is from the TPE-TG82g to the TPE-521ES, which is an un-powered device that can receive PoE power and forward it on to ohter devices. The 521ES sits in my office, and from there I connect to the third AP One Mini, as well as hardwired ethernet to other devices.

The entire system is backed up by a UPS with a big battery, and since it’s PoE powered, even if I lose power overall, the network and WiFi will keep working.

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7

@soylentgreen Your 8 port switch is unmanaged? If it is, I presume if the AP minis is sending down vlan tagged traffic, it’ll forward it through untouched to the router, provided its connected to a TRUNK port?

I’m looking at using a POE switch to power 1 or 2 minis… curious though if the switch needs to be “managed” so that VLANs can be configured to allow tagged traffic through or not.

I don’t think i need to control the switch ports at the moment to assign vlans at that level… but upgrading to a smart switch I guess would give me that added capability if ever i need it?

8

Some (most?) unmanaged switches do not strip the tags off the VLAN tagged packets, so in that sense is is likely to work, in the sense of the VLAN tags being recognized by devices hanging off the switch. However, such a switch is a single broadcast domain, so you would lose the separation of VLANS w.r.t. packet sniffing and the like. There may be other issues, but if local security is not the driving force then it’s worth a shot (unmanaged switches are cheap).

W.r.t. the POE objective: The BR1 Minis are (all?) powered by passive POE. If you have a POE switch delivering active POE then you need a converter with sufficient wattage to drive the Mini. At which point it is tempting to simply buy a passive injector as such (or a bank of them) to sit between the non-POE switch and the mini(s). It is likely to be less expensive (if you are price sensitive) and less noisy (if you have a POE switch large enough to require a fan, where a non-POE switch would not)

Just some $0.02

Z

1 Like
9

Thanks @zegor_mjol

I’m testing out a Trendnet TPE-1011… 802.3AF injector… I was considering a switch to avoid having to run an xtra cat cable back to the B20x for the 2nd AP One mini…

Not clear on the passive vs active poe… I figured if the switch offered POE it could autosense the POE device power requirements and send appropriate power. The AC ONe mini mentions 802.3AF POE… no mention of passive POE

10

I was not clear on the “mini” :slight_smile: The mini I referred to was the BR1 Mini (a cellular router) and assumes passive POE. The AC One mini does indeed work off an active POE - so never mind my comment.

Z

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11

They are plugged into a Trunk port, and works just fine.

12

I ended up ordering https://www.trendnet.com/products/edgesmart-switch/8-port-gigabit-edgesmart-poe-switch-TPE-TG82ES

It’ll give me the added benefit of having some vlan controlled ports in my basement.

13

Curious to know if you enabled any VLAN specific configs on your Trendnet switches or left them at factory default?

I’ve read through the docs a couple of times and i find thei vlan documentation a little lacking.

For now, I have my poe switch connected to a trunk any lan port on my B20x… I dont plan to have any port specific vlans on the switch yet, but wondering if I have anything to do to ensure tagged vlan packets get through ok to the b20x