sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring PoE Cable

I realize that this question will differ for each country. Is there a standard for PoE cable? Will cat 5e work? Does not all cat 5e work. When I looked on General Cables web site, only cat 6 was rated for IEEE 802.3AT DTE POE, that is the standard for PoE. I tried to find in standards about cable but not luck. The school board is wanting to do some PoE this summer and want some answers. Do you all use a different coloured cat 5 , 6 for PoE? Thanks for your help.

I'm not sure I understand your questions. You can definitely use CAT5 for POE. For most POE compatible devices, power and data are carried through the same cable.

All POE devices use power over the cable. Don't worry about the power part, just concern your self with the right cable for the ethernet part. If you have the right cable for the particular application, then the power over the cable will take care of itself.

"Power Over Ethernet" Is not Cat5/Cat6 dependent . But rather a choice of using Powered Bricks or Powered Blades ! Powered Blades do have to have a Power Consumption factored figured into your install .

We've been using POE power injectors for about two years with CAT5e cable. Just got to install our first Cisco POE switches, using same CAT5e cable with absolutely no problems. I wonder if General Cable is trying to sell the physical separation usually found in CAT6 as the "qualifying" factor for POE? I don't imagine Canadian standards are much (if any) different than US.

POE simply means using the "spare" pairs, white/blue and white/brown as a circuit for power.
So in my mind as long as you have at least cat 5 cables you should be in good shape.

On the other hand, if the school is wanting "proof of ratings" I would go to the cable manufacturer's web page and see what they provide.

I do not like the idea of putting voltage in parallel with data but I guess it works for now.

I have ran POE over Cat5e, Cat5, Cat3 and even Flat Satin once in a pinch, but never over Cat6. Go figure. Unless customer or equipment specifically requires Category 6 or better cable, I would think Cat5e would be quite sufficient. We have installed numerous POS access points that are POE in the last year and a half, no problems what-so-ever with them.

That's one configuration. There are two.

The reason you could not find much as for standards on Cat5/5E is because PoE normally uses those spare pairs on 10/100 base systems. This means it is leaving the data transfer pairs alone.

Remember that Cat6 can be used for gigabit ethernet and when it is, all pairs are used.

PoE can be aplied to the Tx/Rx pairs as well (pairs 1,2 and 3,6). It is not supposed to affect speed (bandwidth) and data transfer. Since all pairs are being used, a PoE standard had to be set for Cat6.