Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) chip supplier PowerDsine will
present a white paper at an IEEE meeting in November proposing to
double the usable power limit with the introduction of a high power
standard.
The “high-power-over-Ethernet” standard will be capable of
delivering current to devices such as laptops at 13 watts on a 48
volt input. Existing standards have restricted the 802.3af standard
to low-power devices.
As well as laptops, the new standard would make it possible to
deliver power to advanced network surveillance cameras, flat screen
monitors and video phones.
PowerDsine chief executive Igal Rotem said the idea faced a
number of political hurdles, but he believed that the industry
would come up with products in 18 to 24 months once a standards
committee had been formed under the IEEE’s auspices.
PowerDsine - which sells its own proprietary
high-power-over-Ethernet systems to customers dissatisfied with
802.3af limits - also hopes the proposal with allow a compromise
between rival systems being developed by Cisco and Nortel.
The new standard would be fully backwards compatible with
802.3af and would be designed to work across all Category 5 and 6
installations, although there would be problems with older cabling,
he said.
John E Dunn writes for Techworld.com