MikroTik GPeR and Extending POE Cable Runs

Meekrotik lolz

Just wanted to let you know that I have a run for a security camera to my mailbox. The run is ~425' and has had sporadic connectivity issues. I bought one of these based on your review and placed it 1/3 of the way down the run. It's amazing the difference, thanks!

Could you do a teardown of the GPeR? I'm interested what's in there, that they sell ist for $16 only.

Interesting, but from a maintainability perspective I would much rather have the active hardware at the endpoints. I can just imagine these stuffed inside a conduit in the rafters of a giant warehouse, a wall somewhere, underground conduit or the like, it sits there for a few years, people move on to other things, and then the new maintainers end up with failed cables not knowing it is really the repeater in the cable run that failed or started glitching up.

Troubleshooting wise and longevity wise, it would be much easier to pull OS2 fiber and some sort of power separately to the other side. Especially if you end up with OS2 fiber and AC power, a simple let's drive this one PoE camera one day could end up with multiple PoE switches and a CWDM system another day. It seems so often something starts as we need some sort of connectivity over there for this one thing we are trying to do and then fast forward a few years there are all of these networked devices there or nearby getting network access from that run or talk of doing new runs because the old run can't keep up. For what OS2 fiber costs, it is pretty crazy what you can stick over it if you need it. Companies can easily spend thousands just for a single long cable run on installation where say the OS2 fiber itself costs 100 to 200 bucks for a pre-made cable, just pull it through. Also these runs tend to be doing something useful, so when they go down and you can't immediately figure out what is going on and fix it, that tends to cost more than any money saved by say going the repeater route over fiber all the way to the other side route.

This is also one of my gripes about the coax networks so many of us have as our main home Internet option. When you have fiber to the home, at least for me, it has been this stuff just works. There was one time the ISP accidentally unplugged my cable at their CO (central office) and another time the Internet was out for unexplained reasons for a few minutes, but that has been it from them so far. While coax has its interference issues, there has also been a bunch of times for me at least where something broke or lost power in the active equipment they have in the field. Actually even with CAT6 Ethernet, those long runs with copper makes me wonder how far can you really go before interference becomes a major issue? This just sounds like a solution asking for trouble and when you need to maintain this crap, whatever money you can convince the bean counters to pay for the most reliable solution you can get is what you want to be pushing for. You don't want a networking solution that is going to be problematic and hamper business operations.

Have a 300m cable run this would be ideal for! (Can't use Fibre as I need PoE for a remote camera) Definitley interested to see 2 or 3 of them daisy-chained. Is the enclosure 100% waterproof? Thinking of putting in an underground duct that can have water in it.

With fiber so cheap, if you don't absolutely need POE you might as well go optical.

More MikroTik content please!

I dont know why I dont see more Mikrotik out in the field..

This is amazing, I can totally use this. Thank you for the video

Why does Mikrotik always have the most useful devices

It should be mentioned you don't have to feed the GPeR's with 24V passive PoE to use the last one in "do not forward voltage" mode. You just have to power them with passive PoE within the voltage range. In the case of Ubiquiti USG and EdgeSwitches, that is 24V passive but in the case Netonix, Ubiquiti ToughSwitches, Mikrotik switches, etc that support 48V passive PoE you can feed the GPeR with the high voltage. If you want to get the full daisy chain of GPeRs (7), the voltage drop beyond 5 GPeRs (930 m) actually requires you use 50+ VDC to power the chain.

I would consider using one of these if you’d be able to monitor it. If this thing dies 5 years after installation, good luck trying to remember it even existed. Good for small companies with small networks though.

Any idea why it also has jumpers on the "PoE In" side? That doesn't seem to make much sense - it seems like it wouldn't get any power if you pull those off.

Thanks for the review on the product there Tom, nice and simple. Well done to Mikrotik for a great product. Will probably be using it in the future. So awesome!

Great stuff Tom, thanks for sharing

q is why to use this instead of more cheap repeaters

How about a follow up where you see how many of these combined with game changer cables to see how far you can go.

Good to know. I have always done this using a "Ubiquiti NS-W NanoSwitch Outdoor 4-Port PoE Passthrough Switch". They are good for up to 200 meters if you put one in the middle of the run. I normally power lightbeams or nanostations like this. Those devices normally need a .3 AMP 24V POE injector, but with a long run I use a 1 AMP POE.