I’ve owned plenty of network gear over the years. Great routers, crappy routers, access points, cheap switches, expensive ones, silent ones and extremely loud ones!
You plug them in, they boot, lights blink, life goes on.
My new MiktroTik CS309 is a different animal altogether.
I accidentally pulled the power from it. I was trying to remove another plug and, without paying attention, unplugged the power adapter of the MikroTik as well.
No drama, no Ceph yet, no traffic going over the interfaces. Just a quiet network for a moment.
I Plugged the power back in.
Management port lights up.
All SFP+ ports: dead.
Completely.
Nothing.
At first glance it looked broken. At second glance it looked… offended? For lack of a better word.
My first thought: maybe I plugged the power brick back in too quickly. Perhaps some capacitors were stuck in a weird, partially drained, undefined state.
So pulled the power plug again, waited 30 seconds and plugged it back in.
Yeah, rinse and repeat.
Management port lights up.
All SFP+ ports: dead. Completely. Nothing.
Once again, the unit looked offended.
After some digging (and mild panic), the fix turned out to be surprisingly specific:
- Unplug everything
- Power off
- Disconnect all the SFP+ cables
- Wait at least 60 seconds
- Plug in the power, without adding the SFP+ cables
- Wait until it is completely booted ( twice beeped )
- Reconnect the SFP+ modules
And suddenly, like nothing ever happened, it was back online.
Hey.. Wait..
WHAT?
Personality?
This is not a bug, it’s a personality!
This is the first switch I’ve owned that doesn’t just boot.
It needs a startup ritual.
The management port will happily come up while the rest of the switch is still stuck in an existential crisis.
The SFP+ subsystem, apparently, needs silence, darkness, and time to reflect on its life choices.
Pull the plug too abruptly and it doesn’t forget.
It sulks.
Lessons learned
- This is not consumer gear
- This is not “enterprise” smooth either!
- This is ehm temperamental hardware?!
And honestly? I kind of like it. 😛
It’s fast, flexible, absurdly capable for the price, completely silent and it clearly communicates one thing:
“If you treat me like a dumb switch, I will punish you.”
Fair enough.
Lessons learned!
Brain out!