Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green)
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@ryanrozich Did you make sure it was the correct voltage and the center pin was + ?
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@ryanrozich said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
I did try another power brick that I had in my closet, when it plugged in there was a slight pop and no lights
As others have written - go and look if:
- the voltage written on the PSU you have used is 12V
- look at the polarity of the plug if it has the correct polarity (plus in the middle)
Electric devices are generally protected against false polarity by a kind of fuse but not against overvoltage.
In the badest case you have to find a technician that opens the box and take a look inside. -
@ryanrozich said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
@stephenw10 I did try another power brick that I had in my closet, when it plugged in there was a slight pop and no lights. I tried plugged the original netgate power brick back and now there are no leds lighting up at all now. I wonder if I blew something.
I bought this Oct 2021 so assume I am out of any netgate warranty. Im also not an electrical engineers so it's something out of my depth to try and fix the electronic components. Is there anywhere that repairs these?
Something blew for sure but to remove all doubt, you didn't cause this.
This result was one of the probable outcomes as, from the outset, you had a power failure either at the PSU level that damaged the device, or - more likely - you had a power failure on the device side that damaged the PSU.
The reason Steve and I zoomed into this view was the lack of USB console. As mentioned earlier, this is more like a separate component that relies on its power from the USB interface. In a 'perfect' design (something never achieved) this would be so isolated from the host machine that it would never share a failure path. In this case it clearly did so the main PCB was almost certainly toasted.
A couple of things to note - don't use either the Negate brick (clearly damaged) or the donor 12v brick again, unless you have the means to test the donor brick. You may have just surrendered it to science.
In common with many 12v DC devices there tends not to be a great deal of power protection built into this class of devices (reversed polarity mitigation is easy so it tends to be baked-in to every design). I'm not throwing rocks at the manufacturer when I say that there should be more protection - but the manufacturer is far from alone in this 'design' problem at this class of hardware.
I'd forget about getting it repaired as there is already a known secondary failure (ie console) in this case. The test here was more to see if the failure was isolated to the console. A Hail Mary, if you like. Bummer.
I know it is an expensive item (I have one that is now outside of its original warranty). The warranty action here is down to Netgate and we will never see what arrangements they have with the manufacturer.
The rest is down to their goodwill or where you live. Here in the UK or EU it would be nuts for Netgate to fight a claim for anything under 2 years old. The law is less clear between say 2 & 6 years and I would suggest that you forget it in most cases (the UK can sometimes be worth it for expensive items well-under 4 years old as you only risk the small claims court fee - but only sometimes).
Design shortcomings does not always equal design error. A failure rate is anticipated and as painful as it is to acknowledge it, the bell-curve has an early side.
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Mmm, indeed that doesn't sound good. Are you sure that other power brick was suitably rated as others have asked?
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@stephenw10 Just looked, and the voltage of the PSU used was over 12v so I probably did blow something by trying this test. It was the brick that was powering my PoE switch which is likely way too overpowered for my netgate 6100. I should have been more careful :(
So while I was originally getting this unknown 3 LED light pattern with the Netgate PSU plugged in and no console, now I get nothing when plugging that Netgate PSU in. I live in Austin TX USA. This is my 3rd netgate appliance and I've picked them all up locally. Are there any options to get this reparied?
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You can open a ticket and see what the options are. But if we are able to do anything it would be swapping out the board which would probably be the majority of the cost. However I'm not sure we can for the 6100.
Steve
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@stephenw10 Thanks I wasnt sure which option to choose when opening the ticket so I chose TAC lite. Ticket is 2056287515
Fingers crossed that I can get it back to life, I went bigger on my 3rd netgate appliance when getting the 6100 hoping to invest in something that would last a long time.
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@RobbieTT a lot. It was a 120W power supply. See below:
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@ryanrozich said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
@stephenw10 Thanks I wasnt sure which option to choose when opening the ticket so I chose TAC lite. Ticket is 2056287515
Fingers crossed that I can get it back to life, I went bigger on my 3rd netgate appliance when getting the 6100 hoping to invest in something that would last a long time.
Support replied to my ticket suggested re-imaging the software if it powers up
If not, apparently Im out of luck because it’s out of warranty.Kinda tough to justify dropping another $800 on something to replace something that lasted only 2 years. I’ve been rooting for Netgate, especially since they’re Austin-based and Bob from sales has been awesome and super-knowledgable, helping me buy my last two netgate boxes; but I might switch gears now.
Eyeing the Unifi Gateway Professional since it's got 10G ports for LAN/WAN and its cheaper than the 6100. Ubiquiti provides a 2 year warranty and when I buy with my AMEX that doubles to a 4yr warranty. Hoping to buy a quality gateway that will lasts at least 5yrs.
I’m not into deep network customization, just need solid security for my home/office. Plus, it should play nice with my Ubiquiti WiFi setup (2 x U6 enterprise AP + U6 exendder), also the unifi admin console is pretty slick .
Any of you have experience with Ubiquiti gateways or other reliable options that won’t bail on me in two years?
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@ryanrozich said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
@RobbieTT a lot. It was a 120W power supply.
Ok, 54v would be rather exciting!
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@ryanrozich said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
Support replied to my ticket suggested re-imaging the software if it powers up
If not, apparently Im out of luck because it’s out of warranty.Kinda tough to justify dropping another $800 on something to replace something that lasted only 2 years. I’ve been rooting for Netgate, especially since they’re Austin-based and Bob from sales has been awesome and super-knowledgable, helping me buy my last two netgate boxes; but I might switch gears now.
Eyeing the Unifi Gateway Professional since it's got 10G ports for LAN/WAN and its cheaper than the 6100. Ubiquiti provides a 2 year warranty and when I buy with my AMEX that doubles to a 4yr warranty. Hoping to buy a quality gateway that will lasts at least 5yrs.
Any of you have experience with Ubiquiti gateways or other reliable options that won’t bail on me in two years?
Well tbh, your device might have been ok by just swapping a correctly rated PSU.
I have seen many external PSUs die in and just out of warranty time , so I wouldn't go saying that your 6100 device lasted only two years.
Also, I don't think any company will swap/repair under warranty a device that you have fried using the wrong PSU, in this case more than four times over-voltage (54V vs 12V)... -
@ryanrozich said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
Any of you have experience with Ubiquiti gateways or other reliable options that won’t bail on me in two years?
I have loads, so ask away. I even run UniFi APs, multi gig switches etc at home too.
There might be more than one reason why my router/firewall isn't behind the nice UniFi management single pane of glass though...
UniFi has been known to let the expensive smoke out too:
They did try to mess me about with the above device and the just-out-of-warranty stuff. But following some further failings and messing about they did come good just after the first notice-of-action arrived.
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@mvikman said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
Well tbh, your device might have been ok by just swapping a correctly rated PSU.
Given @RobbieTT observations above, it sounds like the PCB (not the PSU) was toasted from the start. The 6100 should not require being plugged into power before the client can connect to the USB serial console, since I could not connect to the serial console, the problem was likely not the PSU
@mvikman said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
I have seen many external PSUs die in and just out of warranty time , so I wouldn't go saying that your 6100 device lasted only two years.
If the above is correct, the 6100 board was likely DOA from the start and it was just over 2 years since I bought it, so I feel justifiably disappointed in the quality given the price point
@mvikman said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
Also, I don't think any company will swap/repair under warranty a device that you have fried using the wrong PSU
If it was under warranty I would not have had to go to a community support forum to ask for advice on a failure with an LED pattern that was undocumented and unknown, I would have just sent it in for service or replacement. With other vendors I am able to get at least 4yrs coverage.
I do appreciate everyone in the community here that offered advice and guidance to try and help me fix this!
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@ryanrozich said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
the problem was likely not the PSU
I agree. You could test the PSU to confirm that though.
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@RobbieTT said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
I have loads, so ask away. I even run UniFi APs, multi gig switches etc at home too.
Thanks! I self host the unifi console on a PC in my closet now - run a multi-gig PoE switch powering 2 U6 enterprise AP and a U6 Extender. Have been really happy with the performance of the wifi equipment (I can get like 1500 over wifi, even on my phone)
What are the pros/cons you would say of using Ubiquiti gateway that I linked to? I was planning to keep using my current muti-gig switch so think that just running a standalone gateway and switch might be better than getting an all-in-one like the unifi dream machine models. I do really like the unifi console and mobile app.
Are there any other manufacturers for a gateway you would also recommend looking at? I'm not a super-user, as you could see from this thread I never even connected the serial console to my netgate box before, and rarely needed to ssh into the netgate box except for a few times when the web console went down.
Your setup is
btw, makes me want to buy a rack :) -
The current breed of UniFi gateway was seemingly launched and then deigned. At launch and even to this day it misses out on rather basic router/firewall functionality (ipv6, ACLs, QoS, NAT, PPPoE).
Progress has been slow and haphazard on core functions whilst they busy themselves on the shiny features like new VPNs, IPS/IDS, GUI toys, reinventing how VLANs work, again, etc. Nothing seems to get fixed beyond the 'looks nice and kinda works' stage before they move on to the next notional feature trinket. Along the way they have made some epic howlers that have left users in the lurch. The have no real beta program anymore as they race through the nominal process at speed with little regard to any feedback before going live and hitting the recognised problems but now at scale.
There are some security fundamentals that appear to be absent... but that isn't for here. I stuck around on their old EdgeRouter line for as long as I could. But devs moved on and the product has died a slow death over the last 3+ years. Funnily enough they are trying to revive it at the moment - by giving it a new GUI on top of the old abandonware of EdgeOS. Now where did we see a focus in shiny things before...
The Silicom products that Netgate currently use are, for this market segment, pretty-well designed and built. Component selection is sensible and the OEM is alive, well and paying attention to its product. Sure, they are built to a price but they are not the cheap boxes you get from China. They are reasonably expensive though and this stick-shock is not helped if it fails at such a young age.
The Supermicro 1U devices that Negate uses at the higher end are high quality devices and very reliable. Sadly their price has not decayed inline with their design age.
I'm not well-placed to comment on other non-pfSense / non-Netgate devices, given the forum. Plus I'm someone who chose to come to Netgate just this year, having looked at the wider market and in full knowledge of an undesirable performance hole that is relevant to me (PPPoE in BSD). It's been a challenging journey with other (yet to be fixed) issues - but I want to stay and see them sorted-out.
The rack-for-home-use discussion would be a good one but not on this thread.
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@RobbieTT said in Is my Netgate 6100 bricked? 3 lights flashing (blue, blue, green):
I stuck around on their old EdgeRouter line for as long as I could. But devs moved on and the product has died a slow death over the last 3+ years. Funnily enough they are trying to revive it at the moment - by giving it a new GUI on top of the old abandonware of EdgeOS.
Thank you for these comments, super helpful! when you say "trying to revive it" are you referring to that device I mentioned? The Gateway Professional?
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@ryanrozich
The lines about EdgeRouters and EdgeOS are about UI's EdgeRouters and EdgeOS, which are being revived with a GUI update. My comments on the UniFi UDM-Pro & UXG-Pro routers are in the first 2 paragraphs.
