Ethernet stops at 100 m. That single number has shaped more quotes than any other spec we deal with, because the distance from a farmhouse to the back shop, or from a marina office to the far dock, is almost never under 100 m.
On October 26 Ubiquiti announced a product line aimed squarely at that gap: Long-Range PoE Switching. The claim is power and data up to 800 m over a single Ethernet run, no fibre, no powered enclosure halfway along.
It is worth understanding before you ask anyone to quote it, because the thing it does well is narrower than the headline suggests.
What Ubiquiti actually announced
The switch is the Long-Range Switch 8 PoE (model USW-LR-Switch-8-PoE). It is a rackmount unit with eight PoE ports, a 630 W total PoE budget and a small touchscreen on the front. The Ubiquiti Canada store lists it at C$355.
The long run does not work on its own. At the far end you need an Outdoor Long-Range Endpoint (UACC-LR-Endpoint), listed from C$145, which is IPX5 rated with surge protection built in. Ubiquiti also specifies its own outdoor cable for the run, listed at C$215 per box. All of it is managed in the UniFi console with no licence fees, the same as the rest of the line.
One detail to flag: Ubiquiti's announcement post describes eight long-range ports at up to 90 W each, while the store listing says long-range is enabled on one of the eight ports. Those are different products in practice. We will confirm against the published tech specs before designing anything around it, and we would suggest you do the same before buying.
Where it beats fibre, and where it does not
Fibre carries data a very long way and costs less per metre than most people expect. What fibre does not carry is power. So the standard outbuilding job has two halves: a fibre run for data, and either a hydro circuit at the far end or a powered enclosure to feed the camera, access point or door reader once it gets there.
That second half is where the money goes. An electrician, a panel with space in it, a trench shared with the fibre, an enclosure that survives a Norfolk County January.
Long-range PoE collapses that into one cable. If the far end has no power and getting power there is awkward or expensive, this is the product that changes the arithmetic. If the far end already has a working circuit, it mostly does not.
There is a trade-off going the other way too. Copper down a 400 m lane is a long conductor between two buildings, and it will happily carry a surge from one to the other. Fibre is glass, so it isolates the two ends completely. We have pulled enough cooked switches out of barns to take that seriously. Our guide to surge protection for network gear covers what we fit at both ends and why.
What to watch out for
The cable matters. This is not a case of running whatever Cat6 is on the shelf and hoping. Ubiquiti specifies its own outdoor cable, and on a run this long the conductor gauge and the shielding are doing real work.
Throughput at full distance is not published anywhere we could find, including on the product page. Until we have tested it ourselves, we would not design a camera cluster at 700 m around an assumed gigabit. Four 4K cameras on one long link is a very different load from one door reader.
PoE budget still applies. 630 W sounds generous until you add up heaters, pan-tilt cameras and a couple of access points. Our post on PoE budgets walks through how to count it properly.
And the trench is still the trench. On most of the rural jobs we price, the cable is a small fraction of the cost and the digging is most of it. Saving a fibre run does not save you the excavator.
Where it fits around here
We see three situations in Norfolk, Haldimand and Oxford where this looks genuinely useful.
A camera or gate reader at the end of a long farm lane, with no hydro anywhere near it. That is the clearest case.
Campgrounds and marinas, where access points sit on poles across a wide site and running a circuit to each one is its own project. We wrote about the wider design problem in campground and marina Wi-Fi.
Rental cottages and shops where the owner wants a camera watching a boat lift or a yard, and the nearest panel is in the house.
For everything else, including most detached garages and shops that already have power, our default has not changed. We quote fibre for outbuildings, for the isolation and for the headroom. Our post on getting internet to a barn, shop or detached garage explains that reasoning in more detail.
What we recommend right now
Do not rip up a working plan for this. It is three days old, the port count is unclear in Ubiquiti's own material, and nobody has winter data on the endpoint yet.
If you have a job on the books where the far end has no power, tell us. We will price it both ways, fibre plus a powered enclosure against long-range PoE, and you can see the difference in writing before anything gets ordered. Labour is $150 an hour wherever we work, and every job is quoted in writing before we start, so there are no surprises either way.
If you are planning a camera or access job for spring, this is a good winter to have the conversation, because trenching is easier to schedule before everyone else books it. Have a look at security camera installation or our network and connectivity services, and get in touch when you want it looked at properly. We cover Norfolk, Haldimand, Oxford and Brant along with Hamilton, Burlington and Oakville.
Sources
- Introducing UniFi Long-Range PoE Switching (Ubiquiti blog, 26 October 2026)
- Long-Range Switch 8 PoE, Ubiquiti Store Canada
- Outdoor Long-Range Endpoint, Ubiquiti Store
- What's New, Ubiquiti
Cabling, networks, cameras, access control, smart homes, hosting and software for homes and small business across Southwestern Ontario. Twenty-plus years in the trade, and we still answer the phone.