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PoE and Ethernet switches

All,

What is the perceived wisdom regarding PoE, Ethernet switches and sharing a switch between IP phones and PC's in a small office?

I can get a 24 port switch, where the first 12 ports are PoE enabled. This would be a neat, cost effective solution for a couple of small sites I have with (up to) six desks. The VoIP provider has specified that there should be separate switches for PC's and the phones. Whilst I can see this as a 'KISS' solution, I do not agree with their argument that PC traffic will affect phone traffic. The backplane can cope with 8.8GB throughput, and a switch-based LAN does not have the latency of a hub-based LAN. In an office of this size, I cannot see that there would be a problem with this arrangement, but I have no experience of a multi-phone IP based solution.

There will be two ADSL lines, and routers. One for Internet access, the other for the VoIP service.

TIA, Phil Partridge snipped-for-privacy@pebbleGRIT.demon.co.uk Remove the grit to reply

Reply to
Phil Partridge
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The problems are twofold. PoE switches are all or nothing critters. I've never seen one that only had power on some of them. The other is the bursty nature of traffic, both data and voice. Lets draw a scenario. Everyone's using the phone, and one of your power users brings in a DVD of the newest hit movie, and decides to share it with everyone in the office. Boom! The backbone ( unless everything is on the same switch) is now saturated with movie, and all your phone conversations start to sound like an alien as packet loss, jitter and so on take their toll on voice quality.

--Dale

Reply to
Dale Farmer

See the current Netgear lineup.. several of their low/mid-tier switches offer some POE ports, including a 8-port switch with 4 POE enabled ports, (FS108P), and a 24 port with 12 POE (FS726P).

Reply to
Bob Vaughan

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