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We are in the process of upgrading to IP phones. We have a date set for late October for the phone people to come in and do the install. In the mean time, I have been looking at POE switches. Our provider has offered to provide us 24 port POE switches for about $2000. This includes 24/365 support with a guarenteed 2 hr response time on calls. When I look online, I can find 48 port POE switches for about $1400.

Is there a big difference between dell/netgear/cisco/hp POE switches? What would be our best bet for powering roughly 60 IP phones via a POE switch?

@Cisco

8 Spice ups
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Keep in mind that your vendor needs to be happy to support whatever you go with.

That’s not to say let them overcharge vs. what you can get the same product for elsewhere, but there’s a big benefit IMO in using a vendor who knows the entire solution they’re selling you.

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Also have to factor in how much power (Watts) they can provide over POE at one time.

Are those 24-port switches rated higher than the 48’s you’re looking at?

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What are the switches they have quoted?

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I have higher end Cisco switches and then their Small Business line SG500 and these models work just fine. Also at the end of the day you don’t have to go with PoE, you can just buy the power adapters for the phones. If you have decent existing gigabit switches you’ll probably be fine.

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Hutch- We know that if we do purchase out own switches, the company will not support the switches themselves. We would be responsible for any switch related problems.

As it stands, we would need 3 of the 24 port switches. For the same 6k, we could buy our own and have a spare laying around.

We originally looked into adapters but in light that we have only one cable to each work area, we want to be able to provide some power redundancy in case of power failure.

Right now we have several Netgear gigabyte switches. However, it seems like these come in cheap as compared to other POE switches. The department has pretty much decided to go with POE switches but they are turning to me to figure out if we should get them through the provider or if we should pick them up on our own.

Has anyone worked with Netgear POE switches or can you tell me if they will be able to accomplish what we need them to?

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The provider has quoted the NetVanta 1534 PoE switch.

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370W of POE power on the NetVanta 1534P. What is the other switch you are considering have for a POE power budget?

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What is the per phone power draw (per documentation even) over POE?

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I have the GS748TP that is for users and it’s worked without an issue, easy to configure, but the management interface is a but cumbersome at times.

Total for this unit is 384 watts

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There are a couple: (all netgear)

GS748TPS-100NAS

GSM7224P-100NES

GS724TPS-100NAS

GSM7212P-100NES

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So theoretically you COULD mix and match those models and provide enough power to the phones as long as the phones are 802.3af POE compatible and the combined draw on each switch doesn’t come too close to the power budget.

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We are looking at the Mitel 5340 which says it has a power draw of 4.8W

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That is AWESOME information. Have you had any particular luck with certain models or are they all pretty much the same?

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OK, so round that up to 5 to create some padding, and add it up. Keep in mind, that you’re talking 60 phones, so at at least two switches. Balance the load. :slight_smile:

And now back to that first reply… You may pay a little more, but if that $2000 includes maintenance/replacement/tech support, it may just pay for itself.

So CAN you do it yourself, sure. I run POE galore at home, and some at work (on HP switches), but in the case of work phones, I’d explain that you can get the NetVanta switches for $1700 on Amazon (true!) so “what am I getting for $2k?” and/or ask for a lower price. If the $2k does NOT include switch repair/support, then I’d look elsewhere too!

Just my $0.02123857325409283492e05

2 Spice ups
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Thanks for the info! I know 100% more than I did when this started. At least now when I go talk to my coworkers, I can use some fancy terminology and numbers and sound like I know what I am talking about!

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I have used the cisco small business (SG300) for PoE applications and they have worked well with no problems.

You also can’t go wrong with HP Procurve for reliability.

regular Cisco is also good but not worth the extra money in my opinion.

One thing you should ask the vendor about is if the VoIP phones they plan on selling you support gigabit passthrough. Many of them still do not.

If not then i’d recommend that they run new CAT6 (or better) cable for the phones, you can then have a completely separate vlan for VoIP and regular data traffic.

I’ve seen too many VoIP vendors sell a client on a solution without really involving their IT folks only to have it turn out that they’re now limited to only 100Mb on the LAN unless you want to run new Ethernet cable or introduce a small 5 port gigabit switch at each drop which overall makes the network less reliable.

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another thing to consider is are you going to run voip in separate vlan for security

what are the capabilities of the switch, backbone bandwidth etc

do they support clever Poe - power management features ?

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We use Cisco 3750 PoE switches to support ~300 phones, and I have no complaints. You definitely pay more for Cisco products though, especially regarding SmartNet. A lot depends on your network environment. Like Pierides noted, if you are doing any extensive security you need a fairly complex managed switch for VLANs, port security, etc. Looking at your original post, If you are saving ~$600 per switch you could almost afford to have a spare switch in case one goes bad. This may be more important than having a rep on the phone who can’t help with a dead switch.

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Thank you everyone for all of the information. I plan on taking this to my coworkers and we will find the best solution that fits our needs.