POE

Is It Okay to Pin an Ethernet Cable If The Other End Is Plugged Into a POE Injector?

Answer: You May Be Able to Get Away With Terminating the Cable While The Other Side Is Plugged In, But We’d Strongly Advised Against It. So the POE standard is supposed to be “negotiated,” which means it doesn’t become powered until both sides agree. BUT… In my field experience, I’ve caused some hardware to fail after terminating cables while still plugged in on accident. It’s just considered best practices to work on unpowered equipment when running cable. This Issue Is Even More of A Concern With POE Equipment The rub comes from the fact that the cable just has way more potential energy compared to unpowered CAT cables, it’s kinda like walking around with a loaded weapon in your pocket – best to take out the bullets, right? If you accidentally cross the wires and create a short, say goodbye to the fused input and possibly even damage the networking gear. If you need some assistance terminating POE equipment Cellar Door Solutions can help

Can I Use a Grounded Patch Panel for POE Connections?

Absolutely – In fact, using a grounded patch panel is required by the NEC Grounding the frame of your patch panel is considered industry best practice, but the correct term would be “bonding,” which means that the metal is bonded (in direct contact) with the grounding conductor (the green or bare copper wire). The National Electric Code Handbook states that the metal patch panel should be bonded in article 250.134 Grounding is actually really important in electronics because it creates a reference ground between all of the electrical components and POE cabling is no exception. Now Here Comes the “But” Part. So the POE shielding (the outside layer) should be grounded, but the internal conductors of the POE cable system ground should be left floating (which means not grounded between the ends). The reasoning for this is quite complicated, but as an installer, all you need to know is that the POE internal conductors should be left floating, and the sheet should be grounded If you need help installing some data cable, Cellar Door can help.