Hi,
There have been some stories recently about power outages and brownouts affecting local businesses, and I go to thinking about the importance of keeping communications up and available. Of course, we have a UPS on each of our servers and essential desktops, but we hadn’t protected our phone system. One brainstorming session later and we have the fix.
I went down to the local tech shop and bought another UPS. The higher the capacity of the UPS, the longer we can keep our communications up for. This is for the Business Central 200 and our internet gateway. I found out recently that most Polycom phones can be powered by the BC200 over their Ethernet cable. If I just don’t plug in the phone’s power adapter, it will automatically switch to receiving power over Ethernet (PoE). Now our UPS will keep our gateway, BC200, and phones up in an outage.
All Polycom phones made in the last two years are compatible with PoE. Some older models will be as well, but there’s no easy way to tell by looking at them. Just leave the phone connected to the BC200, disconnect the power adapter and see if it remains on. Most Polycom phones are cheaper to buy without the power adapter, too.
Using PoE while connecting your gateway and BC200 to a dedicated UPS will keep your communications up during a power outage. That’s it for this topic, so I’m going to go and take some unneeded wall power adapters to the recyclers.
-Dave.
All SoundPoint IPs will support PoE. You just need an adapter for the 300/301 and the 500/501. The rule is, if you plug the power brick into the back of the phone, it’ll support PoE natively. If you have to plug the power brick into the cable itself (if you’ve used n 30x or 50x, you’ll know what I mean), then you’ll need an adapter.
Mike
Having a UPS on your telephone system is a critical component to ensuring a reliable system. Not only does it provide power during a power failure, but it balances the power during power fluxuations.
When you see the lights dim at your office, you can almost be assured that the same event is happening on your telephone system. Just like static electricity damages electronics components, these changes in your power line can do the same thing.
Power will rob the longevity of your components, while you are unaware of the damaging happening. Forget about the large power spikes, you see those, you know when they happen. But, the small browns and small spikes that happen all day long without us noticing are destroying the reliability of your equipment.
I highly recomment that all Sutus installations include a UPS, not a surge suppressor, to ensure you get the years of service for your important investment.