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

No 911? Quote the VOIP reseller...

[TimTheFoolMan]

...nevermore... nevermore....

Tim

Ethernet over Power?

[GreatRedShark]

Apparently, my cousin has Ethernet over Power, that was installed by The Internet Service Guy...

It would be interesting to see what happens if you ran Ethernet over Power on a system powered by Power over Ethernet... who would win? an epic battle, to be sure! ...or maybe they would cancel each other out, and you'd just get regular ethernet? ...or maybe it would be like a divide-by-zero, and your NIC would explode? :P

Re:Ethernet over Power?

[Ray Radlein]

If you could somehow combine the two, you might, at long last, realize the ancient dream of Power-over-Powerlines! Then we can return to tackling the thorny problem of delivering Ether via Ethernet.

This does not necessarily follow.

[MindNumbingOblivion]

If we lived in a world without cell phones, I would say that yes, this would be a likely outcome. However, I live in a college town, where I'd say 9/10 people have a cell phone as their primary means of telecommunication. The attitude toward a land line is that it's for old people and businesses.

I'd say that we will eventually have PoE, but I don't think it will be a necessary consequence of VoIP or telephony. I have VoIP, but I use it exclusively for the three hours a day I work as a call desk support monkey for my company. If I had an emergency, I have my cell phone on me as well.

This is something I've wondered about a lot: how many slashdotters out there use VoIP as their primary telecommunications resource? How many would use telephony once x gets improved?

Deeper Implications

[Comatose51]

I remember a while back there was an article on Slashdot about how PoE can become an universal power standard. While there are different plugs and voltages used around the world, PoE has a standard jack. Sure PoE is low powered but with miniaturization, many of our devices can be powered off of PoE. With VoIP driving the spread of PoE, I hope this will build momentum in making the prediction come true. Imagine going to another country and needing to bring just a CAT 5 cable instead of a power adapter.

Better Solution

[dracocat]

We were facing the same problem and found it cheaper to inject POE right at the phone untill we found that you could buy a 24 port power injector for a couple hundred dollars off of ebay. Put these things next to your switch and inject it there.

Something is wrong with the math currently because a 24 port switch with POE is almost three times as expensive than a 24 port switch & a 24 port POE injector.

Traditional telephones do?

[slashdot.org]

Telephones need to work in an emergency including when there is a power failure. Traditional telephones do

The majority of phones today are cordless and practically none work without power.

I used to buy cordless phones that had a speaker on the base unit for this very reason, but alas, those also don't work anymore without power, on most modern phones.

Re:internet vs phone line

[kitzilla]

> My phone line has rarely gone down if ever. I can't come close to saying that about my internet connections, cable or DSL. The fact that we have two small children means when I pick up that phone in an emergency, I want it to work.

No freaking kidding. The phones were about the only thing that survived Hurricane Ivan last September (in my neighborhood, at least). When Hurricane Dennis went through last week, we were once again power/cable/waterless, but the phone still worked.

So I fired up my generator, jacked the laptop into Earthlink dial-up, and was right back online.

I'm in no hurry at all to abandon traditional telephony. It works.

Not just Phones

[jonbrewer]

PoE (802.3af) is incredibly useful in for business deployments of video cameras and wifi access points, not to mention mini-switches and outdoor wireless bridge equipment. You can even power a laser link with PoE. It makes life easier for those averse to paying out huge amounts of cash to have an electrician come in and put in new outlets. I've been playing with PoE splitters recently to power non PoE gear at 5 & 12V DC - the splitters are $35 ea and are switchable between voltages.

Re:Make little sense...

[skids]

Yeah, there are solar cell price drops on the horizon. Well I guess it depends on what you define as the horizon. There's now a room-temperature nano-self-assembly spray that turns itself into solar cells in the lab. Made, I might add, by the co-author (Warner) of "green chemistry" who is into all sorts of really cool stuff and worth keeping track of. Saw him speak a while back and he was very entertaining.

PoE rocks though. As an EE, I read the spec expecting to be horrified at all the shortcuts, brainfarts, and other cruft you find in other standards associated with ethernet or "lets-jam-everything-over-frame-based-networks-whe re-it-dont-belong." But the standard was surprisingly thorough, and I very much look forward to a wider range of PoE products becoming available 1) because they will make it easy to power from renewable sources (48-56V DC, no 120V 60HZ invertor needed) and 2) because I really hate USB and it would be nice if PoE took a shot at it's market niche.