What equipment need grounding?

[teru-lei]

Hi All,

I hear that many network equipment including router and switch need grounding or the equipment may corrupt when there is electronic failure. But in my network, all the network equipment have no grounding and the network has run for 3 years. So What equipment need grounding?Thank You!

Best Regards

Teru Lei

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello Teru,

basically all equipment needs grounding. Cisco recommends to use the grounding holes on their equipment to connect a grounding lug. The nice thing is that these lugs are never in the box, according to Cisco 'the grounding lugs are not available from Cisco Systems; any electrical-connector vendor can provide this lug'.

In general, if your equipment is rack mounted, your grounding is actually provided by the rack itself. Just make sure that a metal part of the Cisco equipment is connected to some other metal part of the rack.

If your equipment is not rack mounted, you might actually want to follow the Cisco instructions, here is a link to grounding instructions for the Cat2900 switches (to give you an example):

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/hw/switches/ps606/products_installation_guide_chapter09186a00801d57f7.html#63701

Regards,

GP