I'm deploying a lot of Force200 as a point to point link. For grounding I'm using the SS600. The point to point links are installed from a Telecommunication Tower to Enteprise Businesses. At the tower, we connect the grounding cables from the SS600 to the tower's existing grounding. No issues there.
The problem starts at the Customer end, there is no DC grounding at the customer end therefore we have to terminate the grounding cable to the electrical grounding, as soon as we do that, either two things happen:
1. Link is intermitten
2. Link switches speed from 100 to 1000 (it switches on and off)
We have had some issues with Mimosa surge suppressors causing damage to F200's under certain circumstances (ants get across GTD and fry causing voltage spikes that kills the F200), but have had no port sync issues. We ground all our surge suppressors to the electrical service ground. As Brubble said, the 600SS will not sync at 1Gbps.
So your original post implies that that the problem doesn't start until you actually ground the SS ? In other words, connecting the ethernet to the SS the link is fine but as soon as you connect the ground it stops working/flaps ? If that is the case then it seems that would almost have to be some kind of electrical issue with the buildings.
Also, are you using one or two of these on the customer end ( Cambium now recommends one at the radio and most electric codes require one as close as possible to where the cable enters the building). We never do the one at the radio on a customer install.
Since we rarely use the C000000L065A and since the vast majority of our customers have 100Mb routers we don't really know how many may be 100Mb because the customer has a 100Mb router or if they are 100Mb because of the SS or other cable issues. We mostly use 600SS on 450i customers and Mimosa NIDs for ePMP customer installs.
On towers we have had problems with ePMP maintaining Gigabit connections. Bypassing the surge protectors seems to resolve 99% of the ePMP ethernet link issues. We have always used McCown Technology surge protectors and still have no issue with them on 450i and Ubiquiti, only ePMP has trouble. We tried other SS's, including the Cambium 56v version of the C000000L065A but still had trouble.
I've been told that ePMP has trouble with all solid state surge protectors and we finally just got in some gas discharge tube surge protectors (actually fuses ?). I have not had an opportunity to try them yet however so I don't know if they will fix anything or not or if they would help with your problem.
Yes, the problems only starts when i connect the surge to the electrical grounding. I am not sure if we can say its a problem with the electrical issues with those buildings because from that same source, its powering up many other devices and also grounding many other equipments (servers/computers/printer/switches). All the other devices does not have issues with flaps or nor does it stop working.
At the customer end, we use only one surge which is installed nearby to the PoE. The grounding cables are usually about 10metres to the building electrical grounding.
Thanks for the other information. So far we never had issues with the grounding for tower locations because all are grounded to DC groundings. (I am assuming that with DC ground there are no issues because we have never faced such an issue)
"I've been told that ePMP has trouble with all solid state surge protectors and we finally just got in some gas discharge tube surge protectors (actually fuses ?). I have not had an opportunity to try them yet however so I don't know if they will fix anything or not or if they would help with your problem." Do share us the outcome for those surge protectors. I am very interested to know the outcome.
At the customer end, we use only one surge which is installed nearby to the PoE. The grounding cables are usually about 10metres to the building electrical grounding.
A 10 meter wire is resonant for the 40, 20, and 10 meter ham band. I do not know where you are located, but some countries have broadcast stations near some of these bands. The flapping could possbily be RF being dumped onto the ethernet cable from a high powered radio station due to the ground wire acting as a resonant antenna.
Seems that would be easy enough to test for, just patch in an extra few meters of ground wire between the existing ground wire and the point where it connects to the building and see if the problem goes away.
Still though , the fact that it doesn't become a problem until the ground is actually connected to the building ground...
Would one expect problems if the outlet the PoE was plugged into was wired backwards and the SS was connected to the building's electrical ground ?
Had a customer that called us in a rage one time claiming that our equipment blew up his router and almost set his house on fire and burned his hand. What happened was he plugged his router into a different outlet than our PoE adapter was plugged into (it was actually in another room). One of the outlets was wired backwards and the instant he plugged the cat cable into the PoE on the router end sparks and fire and and a loud pop happened. Very exciting to have that go off in your hand I hear.
Seems that would be easy enough to test for, just patch in an extra few meters of ground wire between the existing ground wire and the point where it connects to the building and see if the problem goes away.
Would be much better to either shorten it, or add some ferrite beads close the SS. But,the ferrite may then block any other interference from finding ground. Lengthening the wire may make the issue worse. First rule when dealing with RF, grounds are -always- as short as possible. RF is not DC and does not behave as such.
Still though , the fact that it doesn't become a problem until the ground is actually connected to the building ground...
This is known as an un-ground in the RF world. You may be grounded DC wise, but RF may not be able to find ground. Basically, if his wire is a 1/4 wave length at any frequency, then the low resistance ground at that frequency, will invert at the opposite end (ss end) and become a high resistance resonant circuit. Connecting the ground wire to ground actually creates the problem. Ham radio operators get nasty RF burns every day from these "un-grounds".
I am not saying this is his issue. Could be many other things. His post reads as if this is happening at different installation locations. If that is the case then it would seem there is another issue besides ever building there was grounded improperly. If there is a strong RF transmitter around, this could possibly be the cause of his problem.