802.3af PoE Help Needed

[SpeedDemonAaron]

Well, I'm setting up a wireless network at my fraternity, and I need some help. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to go with the Netgear WG302 AP's (http://www.netgear.com/products/prod_details.php?prodID=224&view=) which are 802.3af compliant. I'm going to want to place the AP's out in the hallways. There are already ethernet jacks in every room running up from a tech room that we have where there are 45 rooms hooked up to 2 24 port hubs. I was thinking about possibly replacing the hubs with two 24-port switches, one being the FSM7326P (http://www.netgear.com/products/prod_details.php?prodID=227&view=) PoE 24-port switch from Netgear with is a Layer-3 managed switch, and then the other being one of their normal unmanaged 24-port switches like the FS524 (http://www.netgear.com/products/prod_details.php?prodID=25&view=).

This is where it gets complicatd for me though. If I use the existing Cat-5 that is run up to each room, and use the jacks that are already in place to run ethernet to the WG302's could I put a normal hub in between so that people could still use wired network in their rooms and still have the PoE pass through a normal hub? Or can PoE only pass through PoE devices. If this is the case then I'll just end up getting hubs to go in each room (mount it on wall next to jack), take a short ethernet cord from the jack to the hub, and another short one to a single port PoE inline solution like powerdsine's 6001 Single-Port Power over Ethernet Midspan (http://www.powerdsine.com/Products/Midspan/PD_6001.asp).

So what is my best option? I'm probably going to use 6 AP's but the reason for wanting to just use a 802.3af switch is so that future upgrades would be easier if I wanted to add more AP's and plus their wouldn't be so much clutter in the rooms, and I wouldn't have to take up two power jacks in the rooms and I wouldn't have to buy surge protectors for the rooms where I'm installing the midspan PoE's.

Thanks for any help!

 

[AFB]

OK, before we get complicated, what is the radius from the center of the building and how many people ?

 

[SpeedDemonAaron]

50 people, radius from the center of the building is probably about 150 feet. And it's 4 floors.

 

[JackMDS]

The Device must be POE enable (not too many are).

If you do not want to take the risk of "Blowing Up" the system you have to use the same Brand POE.

There are ways to make a make shif POE.

Home made POE here: PoE (Power Over Ethernet

:sun:

 

[SpeedDemonAaron]

If something is 802.3af certified though then how could you blow it up. Aren't all 802.3af things following the same standard?

BTW, I'm not talking about power injector PoE here. I'm talking about 802.3af PoE, where the power and data go over the ethernet cable and you only have to plug in the ethernet cable into the AP. There is no DC plug that goes into the AP.

At least from the way I understand it, that's how 802.3af works.

 

[JackMDS]

Well, I guess that Netgear puts a Power Adapter in the box to make it Heavier so it does not blow off the UPS truck.

However please ignore my comment about make shift POE it is not relevant here.

 

[SpeedDemonAaron]

Actually a lot of companies are starting to do this so that you don't have to an any Midspan PoE. That way you can just have a 802.3af switch and send the power to the unit with really, just a cat-5 cable.

So back to I guess my most important question... If I have a 802.3af Switch that sends out PoE, what will happen if I run it through a hub? Will the PoE continue to run through the lines (as long as I'm only running it to one 802.3af device after the hub)?

 

[SpeedDemonAaron]

To answer my own question, what I'm going to end up doing is go with the WG302 AP's from netgear, and I'm going to get some NJ100 3com network jacks that support 802.3af PoE forwarding through the first jack, but they also have 3 other jacks (unmanaged 4 port switch), and then I'm going to get the netgear 24 port unmanaged switch and a 24 port netgear 802.3af managed switch. All of this stuff together should make for an awesome very professional wireless network. I'll post how it all goes and my experiences with these products within the month. Should be a fairly large project.