3 questions....
why was she even touching that thing?
did it cost more than her annual salary?
bet thats not what they wanted to hear!!!!!
honestly, i would have NEVER though about usb->ethernet, the ports don't even look that much alike!
She didn't touch it directly, just one of ports punched down to a outlet at her desk.
It was probably pretty close, the equipment cost, plus all the lost phone calls during that day (it was running their internal VoiP phone system) probably hit it. This is a small town, no one with-in 100 miles had anything like this switch in stock.
Had it been a gigabit switch, it may have survived, as they have magnetic isolators on the data pins. Also newer PoE gear* only puts out a little bit of power until the connected device requests more. In this case the metal ground around the outside of the USB plug shorted across all the data and power pins. It seemed the switch would still send data to all ports, except the source of the damage, but the PoE was dead at all locations (and they didn't know where the AC adapters were for the desk phones).
*Newer PoE gear has lots of safe guards for these type of things, but this was first generation stuff (and thus even more expensive).
