Faulty Ethernet port/pins in Force200 and 190 maybe others ?

Products ePMP
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After this post by CWB  I went and looked at a couple of force 190's we had pulled recently due to Ethernet problems and found the same problem.  I opened a new case of 190's and the first 3 I pulled out of the case also had the curled pins (I didn't have time to mess with more but I'm betting the whole case is bad).   I'm pretty sure at lest 3 other 190's we installed recently that were really finicky about how the cable was secured likely have the same problem. I'm going to replace a 200 later today and I'm betting it will also have the curled pins.

Also at my office there was tub of about a dozen radios radios that had been pulled/replaced at install. Only 3 180's in there and none of them had the problem but out of the 5 old 5ghz 200's in there 2 of them had curled pins. I haven't found any 2.4Ghz 200's or connectorized radios with the problem yet.  When I get back to the main office I'm going to look at the rest of those 190's and all the other cambium radios we have on the shelf...

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Edit:  So we just got 4 cases for 200's in yesterday and cracked a box open and pulled one out... curled pins.  I have a tower climb this morning and don't have time to go through them all but now I'm starting to wonder if this is by design ?  Am I going to have to RMA every 190 and 200 we have and if I do will I just get more with the curled pins ?

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I have 2 brand new Force 300's with the same ethernet jack in them, so we know at the minimum the F200, F300, and F190 use this problematic jack. I went out myself today to check some Force 200's that have been rebooting for no reason and guess what?? They all had this type of jack in them. I have 2 brand new F200 horns with this jack in them as well. 

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Well just opened the most recent box of 2.4Ghz force 200's and they have the same curled pins.. so 8 month old Force 300's  , all the new 200's and 190's...  I'm starting to think this isn't a defect and something Cambium has done intentionally...

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It is most definitely a poor design choice and -not- a defect. If you compare the connectors very closely you can see it is designed this way. Whoever they sourced these jacks from broke one off in Cambium. 

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Ok, now I'm not sure what is going on but it seems Cambium does consider this a defect. Cambium customer support finally got back to me.  I had sent them a picture of the pins, pointed them at the original post here in the forum and ask them if this was a defect or intentional.  They didn't answer any question other than to ask me how many radios I wanted to RMA.   So I emailed back and told them I needed someone to comfirm that this was a defect because it would be pointless for me to RMA these if any replacements I order have the same curled pins. Again they didn't directly answer the quesiton but replied :

"Thank you for your patience. My name is -removed-  and I will be further assisting you on this ticket. As per the discussion with the Product team, we have decided to approve RMA for all the faulty devices with you.

Please check the new devices as well and determine the number of radios with the defect. It will be very helpful if you can share the MAC address and serial numbers of the faulty radios. Please create a separate list for Out of Box/New radios and old radios."

So they refer to them as "faulty" and "defect" ...  I'm not sure what makes me madder, if they knew all this time and just wasn't saying anything,  if their quality control is so bad that this has been going on for months and they didn't catch it,  or that it never occurred to me to inspect the Ethernet port on the radios and instead I ordering new rj45 ends and a die for my crimper... 

The other question Cambium is keeping silent on is when I will be able to order radios that don't have defective pins ?  Right now it looks like if I RMA these and order replacements I'll just get more radios with defective pins...

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@brubble1 wrote:

Ok, now I'm not sure what is going on but it seems Cambium does consider this a defect. Cambium customer support finally got back to me.  I had sent them a picture of the pins, pointed them at the original post here in the forum and ask them if this was a defect or intentional.  They didn't answer any question other than to ask me how many radios I wanted to RMA.   So I emailed back and told them I needed someone to comfirm that this was a defect because it would be pointless for me to RMA these if any replacements I order have the same curled pins. Again they didn't directly answer the quesiton but replied :

"Thank you for your patience. My name is -removed-  and I will be further assisting you on this ticket. As per the discussion with the Product team, we have decided to approve RMA for all the faulty devices with you.

Please check the new devices as well and determine the number of radios with the defect. It will be very helpful if you can share the MAC address and serial numbers of the faulty radios. Please create a separate list for Out of Box/New radios and old radios."

So they refer to them as "faulty" and "defect" ...  I'm not sure what makes me madder, if they knew all this time and just wasn't saying anything,  if their quality control is so bad that this has been going on for months and they didn't catch it,  or that it never occurred to me to inspect the Ethernet port on the radios and instead I ordering new rj45 ends and a die for my crimper... 

The other question Cambium is keeping silent on is when I will be able to order radios that don't have defective pins ?  Right now it looks like if I RMA these and order replacements I'll just get more radios with defective pins...

Hi guys,

While we are doing a RMA for you, we are really keen to understand if there is a problem and the root cause. Cambium did not make a conscious change and we have strict control over the design. What we need are samples to understand if we have a problem or an unique case. Our support team will work with you to get the units back.  Thanks Sakid

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"What we need are samples to understand if we have a problem or an unique case."

All you have to do is pull a F200 or F190 (and I'm guessing F300) from any point of your supply line to have all the curled pin radios you want.   I called Baltic networks and they said every single one they have in their warehouse has the curled pins.  I ordered some 200's, 190s and 180's  from streakwave and just crossed my fingers, I got them in yesterday, every single F200 and 190 has the curled pins. We have yet to find a single 180 with curled pins it seems to be just boards made to go in horns. I even found a 2.4Ghz F200 in a pile of pulled radios that has the curled pins (no idea when the 2.4 was purchased or where / when it was pulled we don't use much 2.4Ghz). I haven't ordred a 2.4Ghz F200 in over a year so I know it's at least that old.  

I would very much love to know were I can buy some radios that do not have the curled pins because right now I don't have a single 200, 190, or 300 that doesn't and I can't find any supplier who's entire inventory doesn't have bent pins. I'm having to install defective 200's and replace defective 200's with more defective 200's. Luckily the 180's don't have the curled pins because we are having a terrible time with the 190's (we stopped installing them).

I would almost be willing to bet that if you have any recent F200's or 190's and probably 300's laying around wherever you are that you would find they have curled pins if you looked at them.

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just to chime in, this post seems a little confusing to me.   i went and checked our stock,  all of our 190/200 radios have pins looking like this, after checking a couple in the field to just have a peak and see, those did as well. BUT we are not having ethernet problems.  we install 40 to 60 of these radios a month when we are busy, 20 to 30 when slow, based on the timelines kicked around, i've likely got 400 to 600 radios with these. not saying these jacks are good or bad, but I'm curious what other factors are different between yours and mine.  

we buy the bulk 100 packs of the ubnt tough connectors (ducks) but that's the one product of theirs we haven't had issues with.    we use Shireen 1042 cable also. 

what connectors are you using? would you be up to trying another brand to try and rule out maybe a double-edged situation here?  2 manufactured components on the far end of specs in opposite directions causing a combined problem?

I'd much rather see the typically depressed pins in every other jack, but to get you stability while the problems addressed on cambiums end, if it's considered a problem.  may be a lot simpler fix. 

1 Like
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Ubiquiti connectors and Primus WCC5CMXE-5364BK cable.  Honestly, for the last few months I have had enough problems with Ethernet that I had ordered some Ubiquiti clone connectors (RF Armor I believe) to try because I thought maybe Ubiquiti was having some QC issues. I also thought that maybe the die in my crimbers needed replacing and had ordered another one.  (Our company was purchased by another recently and since then I've been doing all the installs/repairs myself)


The 200's seem much less prone to issues and we may be just assuming the pins are the cause now that we know about them, maybe I do have some bad Ubiquit connectors or maybe I should put that new die in my crimpers.  The 190's however.. we stopped installing them, replace one with a new one and the new one has the same problems, replace one three times still fails to 10Mb and won't pass traffic shortly after the tech leaves.  Replace them with a force 180 and no more problems.

I also have a pair of 300's in the air. One of them dropped to 100Mb a few days after it was installed and will not do Gb now... I replaced the end on the ground and the power supply but still 100Mb. We was planning to climb the tower and either replace the radio or redo the end but after discovering the pins on all the other 300's we have are curled I'm thinking it's the pins.

I have pulled maybe 20 200's in the last 6 months with various Ethernet issues (mostly failing to 10Mb and not passing traffic or rebooting for now discernible reason)  and have 3 on towers that, like the one 300, stopped doing Gb and will only do 100Mb now. So , once we discovered the curled pins we just started assuming that was the problem.

   I was thinking this had to be by design because if this isn't then Cabmium can not have any kind of Quality Control at all. How could something like this escape them for so long ?

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@Chris_Bay wrote:

we buy the bulk 100 packs of the ubnt tough connectors (ducks) but that's the one product of theirs we haven't had issues with.   

These are the only connectors we have ever used on our ends that go to APs/SMs. The cables are cable tied into their perspective cable tie slots as well. We use either Vertical or Shireen cable.

What we have noticed is random reboots when checking the performance tab of certain customers. So many reboots on two Force 200's that we even called customers to ask if their brick was in a power socket controlled by a light switch.They were not. Update software to 3.5.5, still same amount of reboots. . Have guys go replace all connectors, and lightning suppressors. Still random reboots. Run debug crashlog, some would show nothing, others would show Kernel panic. Replace horn and no more reboots. The only -noticeable- thing in common with all units displaying this issue is the curled pin jack. 

Our radios do not drop ethernet negotiation rate. If they do it has always been a connector issue (bad crimp, etc). We just have the reboots. We have only had 5 radios do this so far.. It is has been Force 200's, and all have been purchased since hurricane Florence. They all have the curled pins. 

It can not be how we mount these units because we have many units in trees that took one hell of a pounding during Florence and are still running like the day we first installed them. And there is also the fact that the only thing that corrected the reboots was a new horn. We also have Cambium refering to them as defects, so it seems they are acknowledging the jacks as an issue.

It may not be the jacks. It may be something else internally that was possbily introduced at the same time the curled jacks were introduced. That does not seem likely though as ours are all 2.4Ghz F200 with this issue, and others have same issue in 5Ghz radios. Common to all is the jack. I do know our issues started back around September with units we received immediately after Florence. 

None of the effected customers ever called. I noticed the reboots on the performance pages. Some of you may be having it and not even know it. I probably have others that I have not noticed. 

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This is going to be a totally noob question... and blame my old eyes and/or a small screen - but what am I looking at in these pictures? I'm embarrassed to even ask - but I'm staring at Force300's and Force200's and ePMP2K AP's (along with various switches' and routers') connectors, alongside your photos.. and I'm not sure what/where differences I'm supposed to be seeing.  Are you talking about some units have the pins being a curved 'profile' instead of a flat/slant profile?

FWIW, I'm not aware of any issue on our network. We use EZ Connectors and I don't see any problem rate difference on ePMP vs the older non-ePMP gear.

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" Are you talking about some units have the pins being a curved 'profile' instead of a flat/slant profile?"

Yes, I have never ever seen an ethernet port with curved pins like that and so far neither has Cambium it seems as they are saying they are in fact defective and not by design.

Howeve it was just few years ago when I relized that some ePMP radios (turned out then to be 2.4Ghz only) would power up and work on ubiquiti normal polarity power supplies. The Cambium techs didn't believe me at first but it turned out the 2.4Ghz were in fact polarity agnostic. I think all the later models of ePMP ended up also being polarity agnostic.

So what I'm getting at is I'm thinking that Cambium is going to end up saying these are by design and the people we have been talking to just didn't know about the new better (not) design... I mean seriously, how can they admit their quality control is so freeking aweful that all these radios have been rolling out with defective pins for ... 8 months ? a year ? 

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Ok, well, for what its worth, i’m not aware of any issue on our network with ePMP 200’s or 300’s having any ethernet issues. We use EZ Connectors, maybe that’s the difference - I don’t know.

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So if this is a combination of a Cambium design decision to fix something that wasn't broken or an astounding failure of Quality Control combined with something we use/do aggravating the problem I'm going to guess it's the Primus WCC5CMXE-5364BK we use.  The stuff is really, really, really stiff/hard, and the colder it gets the stiffer/harder it gets.  When the cable is real cold it's stiff/hard enough that it's really difficult and painful to pull the jacket off with your fingers when stripping it.  

So on a 200 when you zip tie the cable at the port the zip tie squeezes/deforms the cat5e just enough to get a grip on it and prevent it from moving. The jacket on our cable is hard enough the zip tie can't really indent it or get a grip on it at all, so the zip tie isn't nearly as effective on the stiff/hard cable as it is on softer stuff.  We normally put a little upward pressure on the cable as we tape it to the J-arm or whatever it's mounted on. I think with the stiff cable the connector is going to have a little (maybe a lot?) more movement inside the Ethernet port. 

On the 190's this problem is made even worse by the fact that there is no place to zip tie or otherwise secure the cable. 

That's my guess anyway so I'm going to order a few boxes of the Shireen 1042 and see if it makes any difference, the F190's will be an easy test as we have by far the most trouble with them.

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Cambium I would really like to know if we can expect F200's, 190's and 300's with non-curled pins to start showing up eventually ?  Since we started using the softer cable we don't see nearly as many Ethernet problems however we do have from time to time a customer radio that starts rebooting, sometimes hundreds of times a day. 

Recently we had a brand new F200 install that worked fine the first couple of days then suddenly it started rebooting. Rebooted 400 times in 2 days.  Of course it was mounted on a 10ft mast strapped to the side of a 30ft utility pole they had a bucket truck come out and install.  I set my 24ft ladder on the pole fully extended then used a telescoping aluminum pole to reach up and push/pull the Ethernet cable on the radio while keeping my toes crossed I didn't knock the cover off.   No reboots since then.


3 days ago I had a force 190 that had started rebooting hundreds of times a day.  I went out, took it down and replaced it with a 180, no problems there since.  I brought the 190 back to the office and put it on the bench where it has not rebooted a single time in 3 days now.

Force200 a few weeks ago started rebooting several times a day. Replaced it with a 180, no problems since. Also brought it back to the office and hooked it up laying on a shelf here by me , connected to a tower across the street, and has been my internet connection for the last few weeks. It has not rebooted a single time.

Another recently installed F200 a while back was rebooting, I went out and pushed the cable up/down inside it's Ethernet port and no problems since.

Installing a F200 several weeks ago and connected to my test/aiming rig got it mounted and aimed. Finished the install and connect to it in the house, no Ethernet connection.. look at the RJ45 end I just made, looks good. Go outside and check the SS, both Ethernet connectors look good (wires in correct order, all in all the way).  Walk over to the radio (installed on a pole in the yard) and power light but no Ethernet. I cut the zip tie holding it in, take the cable out and visually inspect it and nothing appears wrong. I plug it back into the radio and watch it for a min and , Ethernet lights up. Back in the house and it's working fine.

I'm pretty sure that in an environment where the wind is moving the dish ever so slightly, and the cable moves in/out of the Ethernet port ever so slightly, that sometimes one of those little curled pins does not spring back all the way and simply doesn't have enough surface contact with the pin on the connector to pass the needed voltage and the radio reboots and just keeps rebooting until movement of the cable either brings the connector into better contact with the curled pin or the pin gets pressed down enough that it fully springs back to where it is supposed to.

Every single F200 we have had reboot issues with has had the curled pins, I have yet to have a single older F200 with this problem and they outnumber the curled pin F200's we have been getting in the last few months 100 to 1 . 

I have changed the cable we use, I changed the connectors we were using for a while, I changed the die in my crimp tool. I got a new crimp tool...   It's got to be these Ethernet ports.

1 Like
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Same experience asi you my dear. Thanks for sharing.

I have almos 20 ePMP force 190 and same amount of force 180 in a shelf that were left out with that problem…