Netonix Boot Loop Issue When Powering ePMP 3000L Radios

[Julian]

Oh good, these are the kinds of puzzles I live for, sir. please take no offense to any of my autistic questions, I'm trying to be of use, here, i promise.

I don't have one here currently for pictures but power-wise 3kl's basically a buck converter that puts out 5.5v, with 36v TVS's across the bob smiths for surge suppression. I think just about everyone radio-wise uses a similar circuit, the specific flavors of part can change but just about everyone's center-tap injected with a bob smith network for noise and TVS's for surge suppression.

Just about any part in that *can* go, but the "pick-a-pair sometimesyworks" you're describing I have not seen yet. Personally, that would have me ready to throw my hat.

how's your in-house twidgetry, is there an oscilloscope over there? I can ask around to borrow a few radios tomorrow but it will be next week before I get anything set up at a test site to try and duplicate

[gunther_01]

I think I may have a small circuit board style oscilloscope.. Other than that, no..

I am about at my witts end.. We can't figure out what is making these devices go nuts yet. Other than we now know we had most likely a bad negative power cable for the netonix power.. We think (serious theorize) that with the ground going bad on the netonix. We might have somehow fried the radios. Or maybe even the netonix ports somewhat. Which is now causing us to chase our tail on what is or isn't broken.

So far, two cambium switches, testing and working with 2 netonix, and a couple 3kls on the tower.. But, when we test the 3kls' they may or may not work in a netonix on the ground on the bench. Some ports seem to work better than others. For either radio.. It's just danged odd.. Only thing we do know, is the netonix does a reboot when it doesn't like whatever is happening.. Thus, why I'm trying to figure out why a netonix does reboot. What reasons cause that..? Especially since these ports seem to still be functioning just fine (power up and have 1g links) when they do decide to work.. I am familiar with blown ports that are just dead.. either no power or link, etc...

[Julian]

I sent you an email with some test points and command line stuff to look at; that scope'll work well enough for this, anything that would cause a whole reboot you would be able to see with the $16 DSO138 I started out with and still wire up every now and again, I'm sure if you acquired yours within the last decade it's probably the same as mine.

Yes bad ground will 100% make you think that maxwell's demon has been summoned to haunt you and you alone in perpetuity

[gunther_01]

Just to post a reply to this.

We found some worn dc power cables going up this tower.. Some on the positive, and also on the negative. At some point, we lost the negative I believe..

There was also some cat 5 cables that didn't test out in the Netonix test. They did on a hand held tester. So, we re-terminated those. One tested good at the netonix. The other still showed an imbalance in the length of pairs for some reason though.. Nothing visible we could find wrong.

So far, we have had no problem on this switch since fixing those issues.

[james@kiwiwifi.nz]

Adding to this topic as we have a very similar issue. Recently pulled 4 x 3000L from 2 different towers. T1 1 x WS-25-500DC 1.5.14, T2 1 x WS-12-250DC 1.5.14.

All 4 have been working fine for over 3 years. We replaced them with new ePMP 4500.

I reset one for installation at another tower T3 to replace an ageing Mikrotik sector. When we turned on the 24v the switch went into a reboot loop. Reboot starts at around 5-10s after the save button has been hit. The switch at T3 is a WS-12-250DC 1.5.26.

We returned this 3000L to the bench and I tested all 4 on two spare switches we have. One a WS-12 and the other a WS-25 both DC. I can reliably replicate the rebooting on both switchs each 5-10 sec after you save the settings. Interestingly one of the 3000L doesn't cause the switchs to reboot all the time, but it does sometimes which makes me think this is a electrical tolarance issue. I've tested the following firmware 1.5.12, 1.5.14, 1.5.26 and 1.5.27. The switchs reboot on all firmware aside 1.5.12. They DO NOT reboot with 1.5.12. Strangley I would have thought 1.5.14 would be fine also as our towers T1 & T2 have that firmware, but since the switch uptime is over a year on those switches there could be other variables that have changed.

I've not tested different cambium firmware yet. However, I have found that if you put a Mikrotik GPeR in line with the switch and the 3000L the reboots do not occour on any of the firmwares.

So, there must be somthing in the newer firmwares that affect the tolerance of the switches when they use the 24v power rail and the 3000L. The switches power up the Mikrotik router on 24v just fine. They also power up on 48v 3000 and 4500 sectors just fine as well. So, it's very much a 3000L issue.

We need a solution for this as we want to use the radios to replace our ageing Mikrotik sectors. Is there anything I can provide to help Netonix solve this please let me know.

[Julian]

Well, we got mr. gunther up with some new terminations and cables, really perplexing why 1.5.12 is working and others don't? maybe someone smarter than I will chime in, and we'll have a party.

I think a flight out to NZ is out of the question, but my email's julian@netonix.com and I'll do what I can from here; Same question, is there an oscilloscope handy (or a meter that'll read DC ripple; sometimes they'll say Vpk-pk)?