Mikrotik Netpower 16P / Netpower Lite 8P

Mikrotik makes two outdoor POE switches that we often use for powering rooftop antennas. These are typically used on large hubs where we need to power and connect a large number of rooftop antennas.

Netpower 16P:

The NetPower 16P is a 18 port outdoor rated network switch that can power up to 300w of attached antennas. It has 2 SFP+ fiber connections for uplink/downlink to an attached router and gigabit ports for each antenna.

Running routerOS, it has an identical configuration to the Mikrotik router, however with much less processing power that the dedicated router boxes (don't try to do anything too complex with it).

One advantage of the NetPower16P is that is has two separate voltage levels it can output. This allows connecting antennas that need either low power 24v POE or high power 54v POE. This does require supplying both voltages, as it doesn't have any voltage conversion circuitry internally, unlike the Ubiquiti S16.

Netpower Lite 8P:

This is new product that we have limited experience with, material is subject to change and corrections.

The Mikrotik Netpower Lite 8P is an 10 port outdoor rated network switch. It has the same 2 SFP+ ports as its bigger sibling but only has 8 gigabit Ethernet ports.

The Netpower 8P has 2 power inputs and can also accept a 24v battery connection. It appears that it has onboard voltage conversion circuitry to allow both 24v and 54v POE output from a single 24v input.

It runs Switch OS, which is a more limited version than RouterOS and doesn't have full functionality. It does however have the basic monitoring, port / POE configuration and VLAN support required for a hub installation.