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257 points voxadam | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.235s | source
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rmunn ◴[] No.45663921[source]
Practical question for HN: How do you all label your PoE cables so that you don't accidentally plug the powered cable into a socket that wasn't expecting 48 volts on those pins and fry something? (I know the power injector is supposed to only deliver power when it's safe, but if all your devices work exactly as they should all the time, then I'd like to buy that bridge in Manhattan you're selling).

Do you buy Ethernet cables of different colors and say "Yellow is reserved for PoE, all yellow cables should be assumed to have power on them"? Or do you slap a "48V" label on both ends of the cables you're going to use for PoE and the label is what warns you that this cable should only go into the PoE receiver, and not into an unpowered device? Or do you just not label your PoE cables any differently, and trust that the injector will never malfunction at the same time that you plug the PoE cable into the wrong device?

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hackmiester ◴[] No.45664255[source]
All 21,000 ports I administer have 802.3 standard PoE enabled at all times. Incidents of inadvertent powering are at zero. I think this is just a non problem.
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1. sodaclean ◴[] No.45672691[source]
Because of how ethernet works (differential signaling + signal transformers), PoE is effectively a wire at 48v connected to nothing if the device doesn't support it.

The only issue arises if somebody wires a patch cable completely wrong (neither A nor B), and manages to put one leg of passive PoE's +24v pair matched to one leg of the 0v pair. Which, will promptly smoke the signal transformer... assuming short circuit protection doesn't cut power first. This is why we killed passive PoE.