Trendnet gigabit switched, damaged by AC power loss?

[VirtualLarry]

I'm kind of curious, what is the likelihood of a gigabit switch being damaged by a power glitch?

I was working on my laptop the other night, and the light flickered, and my laptop beeped, as going from AC power to battery and back.

When I went out into my living room, my primary desktop computer had rebooted. When I logged in, I couldn't get my LAN and wifi bridge working. I rebooted both of the wifi bridges, still nothing. So I unplugged my LAN cable from the primary desktop to the switch, from the switch, and plugged it directly into the router acting as the wifi bridge. Then I could finally log into the router. So I power-cycled the switch, and it worked that night.

Fast forward to today, and twice so far, I've had to power-cycle the switch, because my desktop PC loses internet connectivity. Lights on the front of the switch still blink, but for some reason, it loses connectivity to the router.

It's a TrendNet TEG-S80TXE. 8-port, gigabit, metal casing. Before their current "GreenNet" switch product.

This switch was pulled out of my backup pile, brand-new, a few months ago. I could pull out the original switch that has been there for a number of years, and put that back in service, I suppose.

How likely is it that there is some specific traffic passing over the switch that is killing it?

Or was this all due to a power spike that damaged the switch?

I'm more used to electronic devices like this either working or not.

 

[drebo]

Power spikes damage electrical equipment. Switches are electrical equipment (regardless of brand or type.) So, yes, it's extremely likely that the brownout you experienced damaged your equipment.

The only way to know for sure, however, is to crack it open and examine the ICs, traces, and other components.

It's also conceivable that only the power supply was damaged.

Either way, the switch isn't worth trying to fix, so replace it and move on with your life.

 

[cmetz]

I'm kind of curious, what is the likelihood of a gigabit switch being damaged by a power glitch?

Before and after a power outage, you can get all sorts of bad behaviors on your power lines, surges/spikes up, brownout down, out of frequency, lots of noise, etc. This is all not good for power supplies, and doubly not good if it makes it beyond the power supply. So yes, power outages can make things go bad. This is also why you will often hear the advice to turn everything sensitive OFF / unplug it from the wall during a power outage, as the turn back on might do as much damage as the going out did.

Power supplies are definitely the kind of thing that lower quality gear cuts corners on, so the suggestion that it might just be the power supply is plausible. Your switch appears to have an outboard power supply - have you tried replacing it with a compatible universal replacement (same voltage/tip, >= regulated current)? Cheap power bricks going bad happens all the time, outage or no, and they're easy enough to replace. (incidentally, if you do go the replacement route, use a UL-listed regulated switching power supply rather than a dumb transformer brick)

Beyond that... with cheap networking gear, you just have to expect that it's going to die sometime and it's basically disposable stuff. Luckily, replacing an 8-port gigE switch is cheap. I'm not sure that any of the similar price-tier units are really going to be any different or better.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I ordered some of the $14.99 8-port gigabit switches from Staples. They'll go into my "reserve" pile, and I'll pull another TrendNet out of my pile for my immediate replacement.

 

[Lorne]

Our Netgear 24P GBS gets into a unfriendly state often as power outages are not uncommon in this facility.
Though it keeps running there have been times when all the lights are fluttering and require a cold start.
Its really anoying when I only get a 5mbps transfer and cant track the problem and just reset the switch and it all works again.
I have also replaced the internal fans 3x now.