Power to the masses, possibly

It’s been a while coming, but Power over Ethernet (PoE) is the latest enterprise technology to be repackaged for the small business market. And very useful it can be too, doing away with all those inconvenient and unsightly AC adapters needed to power wireless access points (APs), network cameras and IP phones.

However – there’s nearly always a “however” – I do wonder whether small businesses will warm to the technology, at least in its current form (no pun intended).

It’s possible to browse any online networking vendor and order a variety of affordable switches with PoE support built in. I’ve tested a number recently, from D-Link, Linksys, Netgear and others, all of which now offer 10/100Mbit/s switches with gigabit uplinks, optical fibre support, Web management and PoE, for as little as £15 per port. But buying a PoE capable switch is one thing, finding a use for it on a small business network is another matter entirely.

You won’t, for instance, come across many wireless APs able to get power over the LAN, especially cheaper products favoured by cost-conscious small businesses. Most of the companies I work with don’t bother mounting their APs on walls or ceilings, they simply shove them under a desk, where getting power isn’t an issue. In fact, a lot simply use wireless-enabled routers, which require a lot more power than PoE can provide.

Similarly, when it comes to cameras, USB attached webcams are far more popular than network devices. There are exceptions, but whereas the 15 Watts available under the current IEEE 802.3af PoE standard is enough to drive a simple webcam, far more is required for the pan, tilt and zoom operations needed for more sophisticated business surveillance network cameras.

Which just leaves IP telephony as the main driver, something not lost on networking vendors. Indeed, nearly all of the switches sold with PoE also have additional VLAN and QoS facilities built-in, so they’re clearly pinning their hopes on the adoption of VoIP to boost sales. It might work, but I can’t really see PoE becoming a mass market technology, at least not until a lot more power can be squirted over network cables.

The killer application is the ability to charge a notebook simply by plugging it into a network point, something that should be possible when the proposed PoE Plus (802.3at) standard comes to fruition. At which point, we’re told, the technology will deliver 50 Watts, or even as much as 60 Watts, using four pairs of UTP wires.

However (and remember, there’s always a “however”), a lot of things could delay, or even prevent, PoE Plus making it to the mainstream. Not least the laws of physics, which dictate that the more electricity you shove down a wire, the hotter it gets, especially if the wires were only ever intended for data signalling.

Still, work is under way on overcoming such obstacles and PowerDsine, one of the driving forces behind the development of PoE, is already offering high-power PoE controllers, able to deliver up to 56 Watts. That’s only to hardware developers, you understand – but, where there’s a will, there’s usually a way.