[Asterisk-Users] Re: Netgear powered switch

Kevin P. Fleming
Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:08:51 -0000

Jay Hennigan wrote:

> It's the PoE that makes this switch look good to me, not the
management.
> That's just icing on the cake for most small office deployments.

Exactly. That's why I'd prefer a dumb 12/16-port switch with PoE, since
it would have to be cheaper than the managed version. It may only be
$100 or $200 cheaper, but that's still money I don't want to spend :-)

Since single-port PoE (_real_ 802.3af, not dumb) mid-span injectors can
be purchased for around $40 each, I see no reason why putting the
equivalent of 12 of them into a switch has to cost $700. In fact,
putting 12 of them into a search ought to be _less_ expensive, since
there are no cases, no cords, only a single power supply, etc. Right
now, though, you pay nearly 100% more to have them inside the switch, as
opposed to outside the switch.

In addition, for a small installation, I'd very much like an 8-port
unit, or even a 16-port unit with 4-port PoE plugin modules (so I could
have 8 PoE ports and 8 non-PoE ports, or any other combination, at my
discretion). There are so many companies making these boxes that I find
it very hard to understand why no one has tapped this market yet.