Cleaning out the cupboard

I have been spending a little time in my server cabinet downstairs, trying to organize some things. I took what I thought would be a quick step in consolidation. It was not as quick as I had hoped.

POE Troubles

When I got into the cabinet, I realized I had 3 POE injectors in there, powering my three Unifi Access Points. Two of them are the UAP-AC-LR, and the third is a UAP-AC-M. My desire was simple: replace 3 POE injectors with a 5 port PoE switch.

So, I did what I thought would be a pretty simple process:

  1. Order the switch
  2. Using the MAC, assign it a static IP in my current Unifi Gateway DHCP.
  3. Plug in the switch.
  4. Take the cable coming out of the POE injector and plug it into the switch.

And that SHOULD be it: devices boot up and I remove the POE injectors. And, for two of the three devices, it worked fine.

There’s always one

One of the UAP-AC-LR endpoints simply would not turn on. I thought maybe it was the cable. So I checked the different cables, but still nothing. I swapped out the cables and nothing changed: the one UAP-AC-LRs and the UAP-AC-M worked, but the other UAP-AC-LR did not work.

I consulted the Oracle and came to realize that I had an old UAP-AC-LR, which only supports a 24v Passive PoE, not the 48v standard that my switch supports. Obviously, the newer UAP-AC-LR and the UAP-AC-M have support 802.3at (or at least a legacy protocols for 48v), but my oldest UAP-AC-LR simply doesn’t turn on.

The Choice

There are two solutions, one more expensive than another:

  1. Find an indoor PoE Converter (INS-3AF-I-G) that can convert the 48V coming from my new switch to the 24v that the device needs.
  2. Upgrade! Buy a U6 Pro to replace my old long range access point.

I like the latter, as it would give me WiFi 6 support and start my upgrade in that area. However, I’m not ready for the price tag at the moment. I was able to find the converter for about $25, and that includes shipping and tax. So I opted for the more economical route in order to get rid of that last PoE injector.


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