i am presently using a 3V Micro machanical relay on my design... it works fine but i want to replace it with a somthing that is solid state so i get the clicking noise out of my head All i am doing is putting a 3V trigger to the relay... the in and out of the relay is hooked to one wire on a ethernet cable...the whole purpuse of the relay is to break and close the ethernet connection nothing more than that... i have started looking into transistors and other componets but not sure which way to go .... thanks for any help i can get

 

you'll find that relays have a lower 'on' resistance, so are more suitable for high power applications, so long as the switching frequency is extremely low.

in your situation, please consider a mosfet with a Vgs < 3V and a very low Rds. It should be NFET.

Generally the higher frequencies of ethernet have them coming through isolation transformers etc.., so I recommend you do it on the other end of isolation to keep any higher frequency effects out.

 

I have never seen MOS which fully turn on with a Vgs of less than 5V. You can use BJTs or FETs.

 

ooopsie, good call. I work in servo drives and MOSFET and IGBT seem to be 50% of the words out of my mouth, didn't even think twice

Just make sure you stick any switches on the other end of the isolation transformer so the voltages are within range of your circuit. Voltages on the actual ethernet pipe could be anything, they are only differential to each other.

I still think there must exist a 'small' low voltage relay which has next to no footprint and very quiet switching sound. I don't know why but using a discrete to act like a true circuit breaker bothers me.