MS355-48X2 and 24X2 no longer reliably power unifi G4 pro Cameras over POE

[Mike_E]

Got a ticket open with support on this but not a lot of help so far, that and 12 hours between replies kind of sucks. 

We have well over 100 POE devices, last week we added 14 more "Unifi G4 Pro" cameras (already have 35 that have been working for 2 years).  6 of the 14 cameras will not power on.  Switch lights do not turn on.  In meraki dashboard the ports will show "PoE port was denied power" and be orange for a short time and then just goes black 'disconnected'.

I restarted the switch and some of the new cameras came online while other older G4 cameras went offline with above issue.  Restarted the switch again and they all moved around again.  Seems to be random.   Tried another switch and have the same issue.  We have close to 50 "unifi g4 pro" cameras spread across 14 switches and after testing, it seems this is affecting all switches.  Again, the other 60+ POE devices are not having an issue at all (multiple brands including other unifi devices.  

We tested the g4 cameras on multiple other smart and dumb POE switches without issue.  This seems to be a combination of the meraki ms355 switch and unifi g4 pro camera.  

Unifi support sucks, as expected.  "For now to get the cameras working I'd suggest you to use the UniFi Switches."

We have not had any issues with these cameras for the last 2 years.   The only thing I can see that would cause this was that we upgraded to "MS 16.8" about 3 weeks ago.  Unfortunately, rollback is not available since it was over 2 weeks ago.  Not sure I would want to roll back anyway.

Anyone else having this issue?   If you have "G4 pro" camera unplug and replug a couple of them and see if they come back online?  

[alemabrahao]

How is the total POE consumption on the switches? Remember that each model can supply energy to the maximum it supports.

If support was unable to help, I believe it is unlikely that you will find anything here.

[Mike_E]

Sorry, forgot to add that.  

consumption is 130w/1480W and budget is 488W/1480W.  I even changed the global switch power supply settings to 'combined' (hence the 1480W total) to see if I could kick start them.  

[cmr]

Which ports are you using, there have been a number of LLDP PoE issues reported.  Does it make a difference if they are the 1Gb or 10Gb ports?

[Mike_E]

We have tried a bunch of different ports at the left and right hand sides of the switch.  No difference between the gbe and xgbe ports.

[cmr]

Did the Unifi firmware update recently?

[Mike_E]

We updated to MS 16.8 about 3 weeks ago.  The rollback button says we cant as its over 2 weeks ago.  Not sure if they can but I may ask support to rollback if they ever get back to me.  

[cmr · Accepted solution]

Support can 100% roll you back.  Calling them gets a bear instant response.

[Mike_E]

Called support this morning and they were able to downgrade the firmware on the switches to 15.21.1 (from 16.8)

ALL CAMERAS CAME BACK ONLINE IMMEDIATELY.  This appears to have solved our issue of "Unifi G4 Pro" cameras not getting POE power.  

I will also note that the technician said in the future if we call support we can upgrade firmware on a single switch to test without having to upgrade the whole site.

[cmr]

We had the same problem with some older Axis 360 cameras, but as they were only 12MP ones, we replaced them with newer ones.  On the working Unifi cameras does the CDP/LLDP information populated correctly?

[Mike_E]

Screenshot from working G4 pro camera.  Havent had a chance to do packet capture on working camera yet.  I will say there is a 50% chance if I unplug and replug in any of these that they will not come back online. 

[cmr]

BT is UPoE, not sure why an AF camera would be requesting this.  Did the Unifi solution have a recent update that might have changed this?

[cmr]

This is the known MS35x issue that I'm referring to:

• UPoE does not negotiate over LLDP correctly (always present)

[Mike_E]

I checked the unifi 360 cameras and unifi viewports as well as our isonas access control keypads and they all show the exact same with the exception of the 360 cameras which show requested 30 W.    The unifi stuff updates pretty regularly so not sure if anything happened recently but the isonas stuff is old as hell (10mbps) and is never updated.

[cmr]

Are the isonas devices also having issues now?  When I logged a ticket about the Axis 360 cameras that I was having trouble with, the conclusion was that as they sent no CDP/LLDP data, the switch was unsure about the PoE requirements and therefore they often failed.  I think that all Unify cameras do not have CDP or LLDP and your screenshots appear to confirm this.

I'd check the Unify firmware upgrade logs to see if they have caused the problem.