CMU School of Drama


Thursday, September 10, 2026

Line Voltage Into an Ethernet Switch—What Happens?

John Huntington: I’ve always wondered, what if a forklift operator ran over a power cable and an Ethernet line and crushed them together, shorting the high voltage into the low-voltage Ethernet switch? I’ve seen interfaces blown out on switches before, but I was never around when it happened. But I had a couple extra switches and some other parts laying around, so I decided to do a test; the results really surprised me.

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