10Gbit switch earthing

[Alex Atkin UK]

Is it okay to simply connect the earth point on my networking switch to the mains earth, or should I be looking at earthing it somewhere else?

 

It runs off a DC PSU which is presumably isolated, thus the earth connection on the chassis.

 

Does it even matter it is currently not earthed or am I asking for trouble?

[Windows7ge]

I mean honestly unless you're hoping to protect the chassis being struck by lightning or mains voltage there's no a whole lot of point to it.

 

I suppose of you're really worried about ESD you could ground it.

 

I've looked at those myself and the only earth I can think of to screw it to is the ground found in an electrical outlet.

[Alex Atkin UK]

It would be easy enough to take a wire off the outlet, I think there are IEC adapters that can steal a ground connection off say the NAS power cable.  (though I'm a little dubious at that as I heard some UPS disconnect the ground when on battery power)

 

Heck, I could just screw it to the NAS chassis, except I just know I'd forget when next giving it a spring clean and pull the whole switch down off the shelf.

[Ashiella]

38 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Is it okay to simply connect the earth point on my networking switch to the mains earth, or should I be looking at earthing it somewhere else?

 

It runs off a DC PSU which is presumably isolated, thus the earth connection on the chassis.

 

Does it even matter it is currently not earthed or am I asking for trouble?

Off-topic but how is the dual ISP going? are they bridged connections?

[Windows7ge]

22 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

It would be easy enough to take a wire off the outlet, I think there are IEC adapters that can steal a ground connection off say the NAS power cable.  (though I'm a little dubious at that as I heard some UPS disconnect the ground when on battery power)

 

Heck, I could just screw it to the NAS chassis, except I just know I'd forget when next giving it a spring clean and pull the whole switch down off the shelf.

I just regained a very vague memory. I do believe that those ground screw terminals are for daisy-chaining earth from an un-earthed device to a earthed device.

 

Think of it like two switches. One used the earth lead on the the plug the other doesn't but both have the earth lug on the back. You can get a ground though the device that has the earth lead.

 

Also don't forget to quote people.

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 1/22/2020 at 12:52 AM, Ashiella said:

Off-topic but how is the dual ISP going? are they bridged connections?

Two different ISPs assigned the same same tier rating in pfSense, which I think effectively makes it round-robin.  I would love to have bonded them properly, but I'm only aware of one ISP in the UK that supports that and they are REALLY expensive with a monthly quota, vs most ISPs that have no quota at all.

 

I only have certain clients on the LAN assigned to use both, but I haven't encountered any websites that tie your user session to IP like they used to, all seems to work perfectly.  Even my bank doesn't seem to care.

FTTP is coming to my area so I should be able to do away with it completely in the next year or two with three times the speed or more, for the same cost.  Can't come soon enough.

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 1/22/2020 at 1:07 AM, Windows7ge said:

I just regained a very vague memory. I do believe that those ground screw terminals are for daisy-chaining earth from an un-earthed device to a earthed device.

 

Think of it like two switches. One used the earth lead on the the plug the other doesn't but both have the earth lug on the back. You can get a ground though the device that has the earth lead.

 

Also don't forget to quote people.

That makes sense, as this being an 8(1G-BAse-T)+2(N-BASE-T) switch, if it was connecting back to a 16 port, that would likely be earthed so if I was using STP you'd definitely want to use it then.

[Windows7ge]

3 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

That makes sense, as this being an 8(1G-BAse-T)+2(N-BASE-T) switch, if it was connecting back to a 16 port, that would likely be earthed so if I was using STP you'd definitely want to use it then.

I didn't think about STP cables even though I do use a pair on one of my server. I haven't paid attention to if there are switches with metal housed RJ-45 ports that lack a ground or earth pin but that's a good point I overlooked.