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    gareth71
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Show Control gateway - cable length?

Glad to see the forum's back online - seemed to be down earlier today when I first tried to post this.

Anyway, here's the basis of an e-mail I sent to tech support this morning - while they're thinking about it, I thought maybe someone on here may have some words of wisdom to share on the matter ...

If a Net3 show control gateway is being run via PoE from a switch, is it in any way fussy about the length of ethernet cable that's feeding it?

The reason I ask is that we had some odd issues last night when setting up one of our show control gateways. It was initially plugged directly into one of our HP PoE switches via a long (approx. 20m) ethernet cable - it powered up, the LED on the front indicated network connectivity, but the device wasn't found on the system (either on the 'About system' screen in the browser or via the GCE). Subsequent swapping of cables, etc. produced the following results :
G/way plugged direct to switch via 20m Cat5 cable - not found.
G/way plugged direct to switch via shorter (~5m) Cat5 cable - working.
G/way connected to switch via network patch line (~8m) and 2m Cat5 cable - working.
G/way connected to switch via different patch line (~5m) and previous (~5m) Cat5 cable - not found.

My first suspicion is that when the network cable exceeds a certain length, PoE isn't a viable option and an external PSU is needed - am I on the right lines? Or are there other factors in play here?

  • 0

    POE is completely usable up to the 100m limit for ethernet wiring.  There should be no problem with the length of cables you were using, so I would suspect that one or more of your cables is a bit flaky instead.

  • 0

    Sorry to hear you're having issues with getting this to work properly.

    The length limit of the network run is limited only by the guidelines of the standard Ethernet protocol; a maximum of 100 meters between the switch and the end device. Net3 Gateways of all kinds will support this maximum distance including PoE as the power source. There are many facilities around the world that run gateways at or close to this maximum distance using Power over Ethernet.

    If you are having issues there are some things to check...

    -you could have a bad cable. It seems obvious, but it is an often overlooked issue

    -the specific network switch you are using may have it's own limitations that are less than 100 meters for use with PoE. This would be incredibly rare but it is possible

    -the switch may have a limited amount of PoE power available. If other devices are plugged in a nd powered over PoE that approach the total amount of PoE power the switch an provide plugging in your Show Control Gateway may be using more power than the switch has available

    -Cable and/or Ethernet receptacle terminations may not be properly terminated or have loose conductors.

    What is the specific model of switch that you are using?

  • 0 in reply to MPenisten

    The cat5 cables I was using were pretty new ... and the tie lines were only installed a few months ago and all tested OK post-installation. I suppose it's possible that one of the two tie lines and one of the three cables I tried were both faulty in some way - I didn't have a chance to investigate in any more depth (we're tech'ing a show at the moment) but it's something I need to spend a little more time checking out later this week.

    Bryan - will check out the exact model of the switch tomorrow, can't remember off the top of my head.

     



    [edited by: gareth71 at 2:58 PM (GMT -6) on Tue, Sep 18 2012]
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