IP Telephony Drives in Power over Ethernet

GuitarNeophyte writes "The Channel Register states that although the idea for Power Over Ethernet has been around for a long time, the stage may finally be set for it to become an essential factor in our technical lives. One of the main reasons is because of the emergence of ip telephony. 'Telephones need to work in an emergency including when there is a power failure. Traditional telephones do, but IP phones will only do so if there is an uninterrupted power supply (UPS). The only practical way of guaranteeing power supply to a large number of IP phones is PoE.' Will IP telephones bring in PoE?"

Comments

Wireless + wired electricity vs. wired Ether + POE

[billstewart]

If you're trying to reduce the amount of wiring in your building, you still need either electric wires (+ wireless or Data-over-power) or data wires (+ POE), or both kinds of wires. POE may be good enough to power VOIP phones, but at 15 watts, it's not enough to power a CRT or a typical computer, even a laptop, so you're going to need electric power anyway. POE just really just eliminates the wall-warts, so your desk is a bit less cluttered, and it means that you only lose phone service when the rest of your data network loses power and dies.

Sometimes POE does simplify things, but wireless access points can be powered by wall-warts just fine, and they're reliable as long as the rest of your building has power. (And if your building loses electricity for very long, most of your computers will die, though laptops get you an hour or two of extra time if you don't mind working in the dark.)