Ethernet cable providing power to MS130-8P switch

[JohnPaul]

I just discovered that the MS130-8P switch I purchased was being powered by another Ethernet cable via POE. The external power adapter was not plugged in. 

I want to know which other Meraki switches support this feature and what its intended purpose is. I already understand that the best practice is the use the power adapter, but I want to know more about this feature and why it was built this way and what use cases there are for it, as well as what limitations there are.

I already opened a case with Meraki support and it was useless. The first few back and forth comments from support was demeaning and kept repeating that no Meraki switches can be powered by a POE cable, which was of course false since I was starring at such a switch.

[cmr]

I have seen some smaller switches from other vendors where an end port can consume PoE to power the rest of the switch, but never a Meraki switch.  It would be useful as a repeater when you don't have local power, but yours may be a one off... 🤔

[Ryan_Miles]

It's a bug and not intended behavior nor a supported feature.

[JohnPaul]

Is there any bug documentation on this you could share?

[cmr]

Old topic, but I see some similar bahaviour here.  An MS130-8P-I is drawing PoE power from the C9300-48UXM that it is connected to:

c9300-switch#sh pow inl Te1/0/46
Interface Admin Oper        Power  Device                    Class Max (Watts)
--------- ------ ---------- ------- ------------------- ----- ----
Te1/0/46 auto   on             15.4      MS130-8P-I            n/a    60.0

[cmr]

Disabling PoE on the C9300 switch caused the link to go down and then come back about 1 minute later.  Enabled PoE again did not result in power draw.  It appears possible that if the data cable is connected and the power is not, the switch uses PoE...?