The Smart Path to Power Over Ethernet

How to Deploy a Cost-Efficient Power over Ethernet Network

IP telephony has been generating great interest in recent years, with cost-effective telephony driving an ever-increasing number of computer and handset VoIP users to trigger a worldwide surge that seems to be growing stronger with each passing day.

The approval of the IEEE 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard in June 2003 effectively removed a significant barrier to the widespread adoption of IP telephony, in that it greatly reduced the challenge of providing power to VoIP devices. This standard enables electric power to be delivered along the same cables that transport Ethernet data, allowing PoE-enabled switches and Midspans to deliver power over standard Category 5 or 5E Ethernet cabling to remote PoE-enabled devices, such as IP phones, WLAN access points, security systems, and RFID scanners.

PoE simplifies deployment of literally any IP-based device, particularly in areas where it may be difficult or expensive to run separate power cabling.

As the need for IP telephony installations utilizing PoE rise, businesses are faced with the dilemma of choosing a method to deliver power over Ethernet:

1. They can either "rip out" existing network switches and replace them all with brand new PoE enabled switches (see option A in Figure 1), or...
2. As shown in Figure 1 option B, they can purchase Midspan devices and add them to existing

Ethernet switches, to enable delivery of both power and Ethernet data to PoE-enabled IP phones.

Option A - New PoE-enabled switches Option B - Midspan added to existing switches

Figure 1: Brand new PoE-enabled switch vs. Midspan added to existing network switch

This white paper reviews different VoIP market business types, clarifies the role of Power over

Ethernet within switched network infrastructure, and provides useful, business type-specific tips as to the smartest way to deliver the power required in your VoIP deployment.

Using Midspans to Minimize IP Telephony Deployment Costs

Numerous studies of VoIP business types clearly indicate that investment in PoE Midspans dramatically reduces businesses' Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), offering both purchase and installation cost savings, as well as long-lasting benefits derived from reduced support and maintenance costs and increased productivity achieved through decreased device downtime.

This white paper recommends a path that will enable businesses of any size and type to deploy the very latest in VoIP technology while saving a great deal of money.

While the cost savings estimates in the following sections relate to Cisco Catalyst switch owners, savings can be achieved by adding PoE Midspans not just to Cisco switches, but also to existing, non-PoE switching infrastructure from Nortel, HP and other vendors.

Benefits in Large Business IP Telephony Deployments

Are you considering deployment of IP telephony in a large corporation? You might want to consider the following:

• Immediate purchase price savings through addition of PoE Midspans to existing network switches - customers with Cisco Catalyst switches, for example, can achieve cost savings of 25%-40% by adding PoE Midspans to existing rack solutions, rather than replacing their infrastructure with new, PoE-enabled Cisco Catalyst switches.
• Lower installation costs - adding Midspans to your existing infrastructure instead of throwing it out altogether will also enable you to dramatically reduce overall costs. For example, you stand to reduce installation overhead approximately by 20% of IP telephony deployment costs simply by avoiding downtime and using your own IT personnel, rather than expensive networking consultants and electricians, for installation, configuration, etc.

Addition of PoE Midspans to existing Cisco, Nortel, HP or other non-PoE switching infrastructure will allow large corporations to cut overall costs by 60% to 80%.

Benefits in Medium-sized Business IP Telephony Deployments

Planning to deploy IP telephony in a medium-size company? Keep the following in mind:

• Immediate purchase price savings through addition of PoE Midspans to existing network switches - customers with Cisco Catalyst switches, for example, can achieve cost savings of 30%-35% by adding PoE Midspans to existing rack solutions, rather than replacing their infrastructure with new, PoE-enabled Cisco Catalyst switches.
• Business productivity gains - the fast installation cycles afforded by the use of PoE Midspans with existing switching infrastructure will enable an almost 20% reduction of business downtime, effectively increasing overall productivity.
• Lower installation costs - cut an additional 20% off total installation overhead by making cost effective use of IT staff as opposed to expensive employment of external network experts and electricians on a sub-contractor basis.

Addition of PoE Midspans to existing Cisco, Nortel, HP or other non-PoE switching infrastructure will allow medium-size businesses to cut overall costs by 45% to 55%.

Benefits in Small/SOHO Business IP Telephony Deployments

Getting ready to deploy IP telephony in a small-size or home-based business? The following information should come in handy:

• Immediate purchase price savings through addition of PoE Midspans to existing network switches - customers with Cisco Catalyst switches, for example, can achieve cost savings of 20%-60% by adding PoE Midspans to existing rack solutions, rather than replacing their infrastructure with new, PoE-enabled Cisco Catalyst switches.
• Business productivity gains - fast installation of PoE Midspans alongside existing switching infrastructure will enable an almost 20% reduction of business downtime, effectively increasing overall productivity.
• Lower installation costs - easily knock an additional 20% off total installation overhead by making cost-effective use of your own IT staff rather than employing expensive external network experts and electricians on a sub-contractor basis.

Addition of PoE Midspans to existing Cisco, Nortel, HP or other non-PoE switching infrastructure will allow small-size or SOHO businesses to cut overall costs by as much as 80%.

Moreover, most IP installers in small businesses that already utilize the Cisco Catalyst 2950 switch family and are satisfied with their switches' performance and QoS functionality will find that providing power through the addition of PoE Midspans equipped with 24 or 48 ports can save them over 60% of the total VoIP solution costs.

The emerging deployment of IP Telephony

This section provides a glimpse of the rapidly emerging VoIP market and the incentives and key factors that drive migration to IP telephony and vary from one business type to another. In addition, it presents the fundamental concerns faced by each business type.

The facts and figures presented in this section are based on data provided by a number of leading worldwide market research providers.

VoIP Migration Factors

There are a number of factors that generally encourage migration to IP telephony and to adoption of

VoIP infrastructure:

• Greenfield deployments requiring brand new communications infrastructure for new businesses opening shop, new sites established by existing businesses or the integration of a number of small branches into a larger corporate entity.
• Amortised legacy infrastructure that has to be replaced at the end of its useful life.
• A growing number of telecommuters and road warriors requiring cost-efficient access to corporate applications.
• The need to deploy productivity-enhancing applications that require converged infrastructure or can be more cost-efficiently deployed over existing hardware platforms.

As IP telephony gains growing customer awareness and its cost and productivity benefits achieve continued validation, it is becoming more likely that an increasing number of Greenfield deployments will utilize next-generation services and solutions rather than legacy ones.

Similarly, businesses looking to replace an outdated PBX or an expired Centrex service will be largely inclined to deploy an IP PBX or a hosted IP telephony service rather than buy a new PBX or renew their TDM Centrex contract.

The primary drivers for migration to an IP telephony solution include less expensive moves, adds and changes (MACs), easier and less costly upgrades and scalability, and the ability to deploy a number of advanced applications and capabilities such as unified messaging, presence and "find me, follow me" services.

The greater complexity of converged systems and networks is likely to spur some demand for managed IP telephony services, as businesses with premise systems seek to outsource some IP telephony skills and competencies.

Even businesses that are still deploying traditional PBXs throughout the enterprise or migrating to IP PBXs and hosted IP telephony at some sites but not at others are likely to seek a certain degree of cost savings by converging their voice and data traffic over a corporate VPN.

Most businesses still own traditional PBXs and need to deploy an additional VoIP card or a gateway in order to converge traffic. As IP PBXs gain further penetration, an increasing number of businesses will be able to cost-efficiently deploy IP VPNs and demand for VoIP services will grow.

As depicted by the worldwide IP phone unit sales volumes in Figure 2, adoption of IP telephony is growing intensively.

* $$ Revenue divided by 1,000 (source: SYNERGY RESEARCH GROUP, INC., May 2005)

Now, let's analyse the variety of concerns faced by different business types when approaching IP telephony deployment.

Large & Medium-size Business Considerations

Medium and large businesses share a number of common characteristics that determine their decision to migrate to IP telephony for the realisation of next-generation services and solutions. These include the following:

• They have the in-house capabilities to manage their telecommunications solutions.
• They are sophisticated buyers with relatively long sales and deployment cycles that take a large number of factors into consideration.
• They are less concerned about cost savings as well as cost-efficiency. In other words, they are willing to make an investment if the solution will help them operate more efficiently.
• They have a greater propensity to make an investment in productivity-enhancing and revenue generating applications and capabilities, meaning that they are willing to invest in forward looking yet reliable future support capabilities such as Power over Ethernet.
• They take QoS and service-level agreements (SLAs) very seriously, so that reliability is a key factor in their considerations.

Some of the features and capabilities that medium-size and large businesses are likely to demand (as reported in a 2005 VoIP market research by Frost & Sullivan) include:

• Seamless integration with data systems and applications
• Web-based management capabilities
• Integration with collaboration applications, e-mail systems and corporate address books
• "Find me, follow me" services
• Unified communications and virtual assistant; advanced (power) capabilities

As made evident in the sections below, despite these similarities, there are some differences within this category. For example, medium businesses are more cost conscious than larger ones. Additionally, single-site businesses act differently from multi-site businesses.

Small Business Considerations

Unlike medium-size and large businesses, small businesses typically display the following characteristics (market information resource: VoIP market research, Frost & Sullivan, 2005):

• They are very cost conscious - in terms of both near-term investments and future costs.
• They have traditionally been neglected by the larger Telcos and few solutions have ever been custom-developed to suit their needs. Therefore, they have typically had to trade off features for cost savings.
• They do not employ in-house support staff and prefer to focus on their core activities. Therefore, they tend to save on value-added networking services or are more likely to outsource telephony services, system management and upgrades.

In light of the above characteristics, very small businesses are more likely to adopt hosted IP telephony services. They have no internal capabilities to manage premise-based systems and are more likely to try and avoid the initial capital investment.

Small businesses typically buy packages that bundle voice and data services, allowing them to save costs while missing out on some of the more advanced productivity-enhancing capabilities. Currently, high-end IP PBX penetration among small businesses is practically insignificant due to the high costs of these solutions (see Figure 3 for a summary of IP PBX adoption according to business type). Small businesses also tend to attempt to avoid commitments to large recurring charges. They typically outsource system maintenance on a time and materials basis.

Although cost is the single most decisive factor in small businesses' choice of next-generation solutions, some features and capabilities may prove compelling enough to override cost considerations. For example, some customers may appreciate Power over Ethernet capability as a differentiator for their current switched environment.

* In millions (source: IP telephony, ABIresearch, 2005)

Powering IP Telephony

As networks serve a wider range of IP devices, notably IP telephones, WiFi access points, IP-enabled security cameras and RFID scanners, delivering power to these devices becomes a growing challenge.

Before the introduction of PoE, these devices required separate power cabling, AC outlets and wall warts, a considerable barrier and an extremely expensive proposition for initial deployments. Cabling and outlets also required ongoing support and maintenance.

PoE solved all of that by eliminating the need for AC outlet installations, cutting maintenance and support costs and decreasing the cost of running power to devices.

The following section highlights a few basic facts about PoE, as well as cost advantages associated with its use.

PoE Implementation

To evaluate PoE cost benefits for each type of organisation, a few parameters need be defined to serve as a basis for comparison. These include both complementary PoE Midspan and brand new PoE switch:

• Total solution purchase price (i.e. existing infrastructure investment + incorporation of Midspan for PoE functionality)
• Total solution installation costs
• Maintenance & support costs
• Downtime caused to the entire organisation by the installation/configuration of the solution in the business network

Power over Ethernet Options

Businesses have invested billions of dollars in their existing IP architecture, which includes high speed switching, security capabilities and guarantied QoS features that are critical to VoIP implementation, yet do not necessarily adhere to PoE standards.

When approaching deployment, IP telephony installers face the following two alternative PoE implementation options:

• One calls for the replacement of the entire network switch infrastructure with new PoE switches
• The second involves preservation of the current investment (i.e. the existing switch infrastructure) and the addition of external power injectors in the form of PoE Midspans. A PoE Midspan is a power hub installed between an existing Ethernet switch and powered devices, which enables the simultaneous delivery of power and Ethernet data to these devices.

Figure 4 illustrates a typical installation utilizing a PoE Midspan. 10/100/1000Base-T data is routed via a standard RJ45 cable from the Ethernet switch to the PoE Midspan, and the PoE Midspan injects power into the unused cable pairs (only if PoE-compliant devices are detected on the cable end).

Appropriate cable management and installation practices need be implemented to route these "powered" Ethernet cables, as critical voice and data traffic is transmitted over them.

A PoE Midspan offers significant financial benefits when compared to upgrading existing Ethernet switches or replacing them with new, PoE-compliant switches. These benefits include:

• Lower total cost of ownership - Installing a PoE Midspan costs less than upgrading to new PoE switches and is certainly more cost-effective than buying brand new ones. Moreover, Midspans can be installed more easily (Plug & Play RJ45 connections) and installation is sure to prove less expensive (e.g. less money spend on engineering efforts due to shorter installation cycles).
• No downtime - PoE Midspans enable higher productivity due to the fact that their addition to the network involves practically negligible downtime (typically less than a single day of work).
• Ease of installation/Simplicity - PoE Midspans requires less effort on IT engineers' part (as opposed to the massive network engineer efforts required to upgrade or install new PoE switches), also require less support and maintenance (only an IT engineer is needed to install it).
• High compatibility - PoE Midspans are generally compatible with any and all kinds of Ethernet switches and terminals.
• Effective power management - PoE Midspans include SNMP power modules and enable Web based power management, as well as other advanced and flexible power management features.
• Provide power to variety of products - PoE Midspans is the first system on the market to supply reliable, uninterrupted power to IP phones, wireless LAN access points, Network Security and other ethernet devices using existing LAN cable infrastructure.

Next Step

It is clear that employing a PoE Midspan solution costs less than upgrading to new PoE switches.

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