NEW YORK-Vernier Networks, Mountainview, Calif., will make commercially available in late April two new 6500p products, Access Manager and Integrated System, which are based on a draft wireless local area network standard governing Power over Ethernet.
The 6500p line takes advantage of the four unused spare wires inside each Ethernet cable to provide power supply in addition to the primary purpose of providing backhaul. Using Ethernet connections for this dual purpose avoids the need and expense of installing outlets to provide electricity to individual hot spots, said Dominic Wilde, senior product marketing manager for Vernier. Outlet installation adds $500 to $1,000 to the capital expense associated with each hot spot.
To facilitate Power over Ethernet, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers has so far one through several iterations of a draft 802.3af standard, which defines a standardized methodology for supplying power over the Internet. Cisco Systems, which is the leading hot-spot supplier today, has its own power supply standard, which is incompatible with the IEEE draft standard.
To compensate for the disparity in polarity of the two standards, Vernier’s new WLAN security and management products include software in their Graphical User Interfaces that permits hot-spot operators to select “802.3af or Cisco on a per-port basis,” Wilde said.
Vernier’s Access Manager and Integrated System also combine wireless local area network security and centralized management capabilities for hot spots into their access point Power over Internet solution. Among other things, the centralized management in this integrated offering allows telecommunications systems managers to identify remotely individual access points that need rebooting and to reboot them from one central location. This capability removes the operational overhead now associated with sending people to locate and reboot access points, Wilde said.
The Access Manager 6500p has a list price of $5,000 and the Integrated System 6500p a suggested retail price of $9,000.
