Power over Ethernet

  • Article

We mentioned a few months back that Syspine phones will support Power Over Ethernet (POE), which is very nice if you'd like to eliminate wires going into your desk phone.  POE-enabled phones just have a single line going into them (the RJ45 ethernet plug).  No power required.

I've heard from several Response Point customers who were hoping to get this to work, so we hope the following instructions will help.  Here's how one of our testers, Chad Oftedal, describes how he got everything to work:

First, I went to Fry’s (a local electronics supply store) and bought the DLink DES-1008PA ($139.99) and the Netgear ProSafe FS108P ($149.99).  Both are 8 port switches with 4 of the ports PoE enabled.

We have just tested and confirmed that the Quanta system does indeed work just fine with the DLink PoE switch on the RTM SW.

Here’s the setup:

  • DLink DI-804 router
  • DLink DES-1008PA switch
  • Syspine YK1 base unit
  • Syspine 310 phone
  • Desktop PC
  1. Connect the router to the switch (I used port 4 out on the router, into port 7 on the switch.  Note that ports 5-8 on the switch are the non-PoE ports.
  2. Connect desktop PC and YK1 to ports 5 and 6 on the switch (again, the non-PoE ports).
  3. Connect the Syspine 310 phone to a PoE  port (I used #2) on the switch, and I used a standard Cat-5 cable.
  4. Add a phone line to the base unit
  5. Power everything up
  6. From the PC, add the phone and user.  RP had no trouble finding and provisioning the phone.
  7. From an outside phone line, call the phone line that was added to the BU.
  8. Call went through just fine, the phone rang as normal - everything worked great.

Not sure which specific POE switch you’ve got, but you may want to try it yourself if you have the above equipment.   It’s pretty nice to go POE and not have to deal with those nasty bulky AC adapters everywhere.