Exploring Power over Ethernet: Industry Insights and Future Developments at PoE Consortium Symposium

So we are here because I am attending the PoE consortium symposium and I'm helping them with this . So I have some industry thought leaders in the PoE field and we're gonna talk to them tonight .

So if you have any questions about PoE , the PoE consortium or what we're even doing , make sure you put them in the chat box , because I have Two industry experts , because you know I'm not an expert in PoE . That's why I'm doing this stuff to become Learned with it stuff . So my first guest with me is is Matt Apple . I have fell .

He is one of the moderators here . So , matt , why don't you just tell everybody a little bit about yourself ?

So , yeah , we get into all sorts of cool stuff down there where I'm from in Las Vegas , as well as foa and a lot of other training programs , and we really like to get everybody into as much structure , cabling , fiber , optics and emerging technologies as possible . That's kind of how I ended up in this to begin with myself .

You know , just wanted to reach out and be part of everything impossible . Started in 1999 , that was my first gig in the electrical industry , going through a vocational electric electronics program , just never looked back .

So , yeah , I be w now for 17 years , senior technician that I be w With a passion for training and education , just making sure that the emerging technology and everything that we have going on in this industry , no matter who does it , making sure that it's done well , making sure that everybody represents well , because what needs to make Happen is that this

industry needs to survive , it needs to thrive , it needs to grow . The awareness , the technology , training , the credentialing needs to be there , and that's what we're doing , chuck .

It is got to make sure the microphone , the directional microphone technology is awesome , you know , facilitator and moderator , awesome events like this where we get people involved , people that are part of the industry , that have the experiences well , those experiences need to be shared , and Without people there to kind of wrangle these , these conversations together , it

turns into the wild wild west . So that's what you and I , chuck , that's what you know I get to do . We get to play referee and wrangler here with some folks and get some great ideas out there into the , into the space for these things . And yeah , like , like you said , yeah , I'm an IBW guy , but that's not what this is about .

That this is about , and it's not even about my credentials versus your credentials . This is , um , you know , no , it's not .

You know I I appreciate you for everything that you've done for this industry and that these awesome podcasts that I follow every week , even even one of my off-time when I'm just reading white papers and things like that I go back to pre-recorded podcasts and and look at these things because it's a wealth of knowledge . It's awesome , you know .

They had a home gym and they say he's in his own , he's got a TV mounted wall and he was watching one of my podcasts while he was working out . I was like that's dedication . Right there , buddy , that's dedication . So you got a unique view on this , because your IBW and you teach the Bixie curriculum and you teach the FOA curriculum .

So you got a unique view on this . What kind of what are you hearing about people and POE ? I know the electricians are probably might be a little afraid of POE because it might be taking a job a little bit and the low voltage Installers are probably thinking , hey , this is a new opportunity . So what unique perspective can you bring that ?

You're seeing both sides of that fence ?

It's ever-growing , it's ever-changing , it's ever-evolving and the , the electrical workers in it need to be able to adapt . And I do run into a lot of folks that are qualified electrical workers that happen to be electricians .

You know journeyman , wireman , lineman that they are not so adaptable when it comes to change emerging technologies , perhaps a task that they have been so accustomed to for so long . You know they don't like the idea of it changing , and that's both .

You know union electricians and then you know electricians for , maybe working for themselves , okay , and I'm speaking of that for everybody across the board . And then the same thing can be said of technicians . You know , whether they're a considered a low voltage installer or a sounding communications electrician or technical Electrician or technician , same thing .

You know They've been used to doing things for so long a certain way that now this emerging technology is forcing them to change and adapt as well . But you have other groups of people that are now realizing that this is a new industry of sorts . Poe limited energy distributed .

You know it's another way of distributing power yeah , it's a lighting to , you know , low voltage , limited energy appliances and whatnot .

There are parts in the country to where , within IBW , that technicians and wireman and electricians they understand that they have a set of languages written into their contracts that they understand , they go by and they coexist happily because they understand that the work needs to be done professionally , needs to be done well .

And you do have some parts of the country to where they don't see eye to eye on whose work it is . They don't see eye to eye on who should be training it , whose work it is or who should be performing it .

But no matter what , no matter what sphere you lie in , when there's a lack of communication , a lack of training and credentialing , ultimately the industry itself will suffer . And that's the bottom line and that's the message that I've been trying to put to everybody that I've been interacting with .

This both non union and non union Is that to make sure that the manufacturer at the end of the day is accurately represented and that the customer at the end of the day has the product that they desire and that they ultimately , you know that they're getting what they wanted , for you know they wanted to begin with .

You , you have face to face Interactions with low voltage technicians , you know , and also electricians .

What is the biggest challenge that a low voltage technician because that's my audience , I mean , I do have electricians , but by far the majority of my stuff is low voltage technicians what's the biggest challenge that a low voltage technician's going to face when it comes to putting in PoE systems ?

are things that have been considered safe . So , therefore , the understanding of electrical theory , ohm's law and whatnot has never really you know , it applies , don't get me wrong but to a lot of low voltage installers . It really hasn't meant anything to them .

They haven't had to get that understanding , that knowledge , that education when it comes to you know items that now , all of a sudden , are considered permittable or inspectable items .

So a low voltage installer that's now installing PoE lighting or another item such as that , yeah , he's going to run into issues to where he does have to worry about things like code . He does have to worry about , you know , items within the NEC or other standards that he may not have already had his feet held to the fire on , so to say .

You know , as technicians we're all familiar with TI , ei , iee , bixie and whatnot , but not so much into the NEC , not so much into , not so much into code and that right there is going to be an obstacle it shouldn't be , but it's just going to be another part of the education and part of this curve that we're all going to be doing with .

Let's say electrical spec-ers , right , because I mentioned this many times before in the podcast . I'm building a studio . When the electricians were wiring up my studio , I said they asked me where are the wires for the lights ?

I said I'm doing everything PoE , and I might as well have been talking Spanish to them or German or some other language , because they just huh what they're electricians . They should know PoE , but the ones that are going to be going to be the electrical inspectors . So what are your thoughts on ? Are electrical inspectors embracing this ?

Are they aware of it , or are they just totally clueless ?

So your mileage may vary in that right there .

But one thing across the board , though , is is that when I get into projects and I'm looking at them and it's all about what the standards and specifications for that project is Because there are some projects , even Southern Nevada , to where it might be a Clark County Department of Aviation Standards , which is completely separate , since they're actually a government

agency , you know they will uphold to a certain , you know , set of facts .

Dealing with those guys , then , yeah , it is absolutely a matter of making sure that the project is installed as per standards and specifications and drawing Some places and some areas .

You know they don't know they don't care , as long as it fits the minimum standards of whatever they're familiar with or whatever is adopted on the prints at the time of design , not even construction .

So , for my sphere , we do invite folks from our AHA and that's our , you know , our fire inspectors , that's people in our county city , state , people from our local government , osha , to make them aware of certain new emerging technologies .

I just gave a little symposium not too long ago and they see Oracle 726 talking about Class 4 power , fault managed power , talking about where that lies now in modern installations . They were not even aware that something such as digital electricity existed and I said but it's already installed .

Look at a lot of large , you know iDAS , indoor distributed antenna systems . That technology is being installed . They didn't even recognize it for what it was . So to give them a little education on it , it definitely opened their eyes a lot .

Let's see what this question says . So , with PoE , do you see new standards for automotive Ethernet or different technologies which not always standard Ethernet , like HDMI versus Ethernet ?

I do know that , even talking about Ethernet and HDMI with Ethernet , things are evolving to where even HDMI with Ethernet is slowly being phased away and you're starting to see more USB type C , okay , in the 3.realm up and on , where you're starting to get 90 watts , 100 watts , 120 watts with 10 gigabit of throughput on there . So things are evolving .

Different technologies which require smaller form factor plugable and smaller form factor cable are , you know , the manufacturer realm is definitely driving those through user and consumerism . So the automotive question , that's a good point . I think that would be worth its own conversation later . What do you think ?

Oh , this is the cameraman right here . Right here , that's the cameraman right there . So now we're going to shift the conversation we talked about . We talked to Matt about the installation side , so now let's talk to Tyler . Tyler , why don't you go ahead and just give us a quick 13 and a half second ?

And I'm going to time you 13 half seconds who you are and why . I wish you'd listen to you .

I'm the vice president of the pewee consortium and the guy who's putting together the installer symposium that brought these two really smart guys here to Austin and Really excited to have you guys here . This is a big deal . For those of you don't know what's going on , we're flying in six of the best Pewee lighting installers around from around the country .

They're all meeting here to talk about best practices , to network and to figure out how that lighting industry is gonna go well , and and Chuck and Matt are here to help gather that information and Chuck is gonna actually be hosting a webcast Tomorrow night with all of those installers .

So I'm really excited to see what you come out of that with for your audience .

So it'll come out probably mid-January but yeah , I'm looking forward to that . I'm . The challenge there is to keep that one to under an hour . That's going to be the challenge , right ? So the first question I want to ask you is and when you start talking about pewee , people usually follow one of three camps and they think of pewee .

They think of pewee cameras , pewee Access points . There's the people who don't know what pewee is , are never heard of it , and then there's what's like people , like the experts , like we're bringing in tomorrow . So can you give us a good general overall description ? Let's know who this more than just that pewee to that camera , it's more than just that .

What all is pewee ?

The first it was just IP phones , right , cisco came up with this idea hey , we could power IP phones . And then pretty soon somebody's like , hey , we could do IP cameras and oh , we could do Wi-Fi access points .

But what's happened is over the years , it has started to become the de facto standard for smart building technology laptops , tablets , screens , sensors , anything . That's IOT . And when you get to the big stuff , you get lighting shades and this is a really cool one that not many people know about . Just straight , building automation .

We control EC loads Over pewee , like you would normally use industrial equipment for , and that's that's kind of a fun new area when we're really starting to push the boundary in the edge of what pewee does . Because , number one , it's all on one network . It's an industry standard and it is something that everybody has in their building . That's a great point .

Do you think the industry needs to establish a pewee standard Before best practice , or do we need to do a best practice before a standard that makes sense ? Well , there is a standard . There's the IEEE 802.3 standard .

But yeah , there is an IEEE standard for pewee and in fact , uniquely , power over ethernet is the only globally accepted power standard . If you're in Tokyo or in Tulsa , it's the same . If you're in New Zealand or New York , it's the same .

And that's really unique about pewee and in fact that's really what drives so much pewee adoption is , I can be anywhere in the world , I can choose pewee as a power communication standard and I can guarantee that will work with 98% of the other pewee devices in the world . So that's actually unique .

Now it does mean that on the installation , standards are always trying to catch up and keep up , and that's what I know you guys are really interested in about is how do I install it properly and that that does . That is a big question and that's one , interestingly enough , the pewee consortium would like to help tackle .

Yeah , that was a great lead and thank you , chuck . We have an old industry standard organization trying to build the industry standards for lighting Automation , how you take pewee and something that used to be strictly phones and cameras and Apply it to buildings in general . Now we did have a question .

Somebody was telling an interesting story on tick tock that I thought was compelling . So and I apologize , I know you were your emailing or he was texting it in there and I couldn't . I didn't want to interrupt you in that , but the story was he had a wicking issue With his cat cable and when I first saw wicking I'm like what the hell is he talking about ?

I've never heard the term wicking , but what it was is it . Somebody had used an outdoor cable and crimped on a pass through RJ45 connector outdoor and then left it outside Uncovered . Well , apparently what happened is somewhere along the way that it rained or some mist or Came up and it sucked it . It wicked and you use the right term , it was actually correct .

It wicked it right up into the cable . And Then a few days later the the PoE camera came . Somebody plugged in the PoE camera , the PoE camera warmed up and it sucked the water right back out of that cable into the camera through the pass through connectors . So this is an interesting one .

I hear the debate and maybe I can ask a question Closed and RJ45 versus pass through RJ45 . I know there's a big debate out there . I'm curious what you guys are thinking . Do you do pass through ? I've done a lot of pass through . I like pass through .

I mean , obviously I'm a little bit picky about how the cables trim and how it looks , but is pass through okay or is pass through a no bueno ?

So , yeah , so modular ends come in either pass through connectors or the traditional . And there's a huge debate because Old school people like the traditional ones because that's what they've always installed .

They don't like the past through is because you got the bear copper sticking out the end , although there is One or two manufacturers make little bars to put across that so it protects those . But it's still kind of open . It's not sealed off like a traditional . If I'm doing an inside , if I'm doing like an MPTL inside of the building , I'll go either way .

Just depends on what I have Outside plant application where it's gonna be exposed to moisture . I'm gonna want a traditional and I'm gonna want that thing in some kind of IP67 rated system , because water could take from . Somebody lives in Florida , water gets into everything , everything . Now here's the thing is one question I want to ask you .

Based on that , if water gets on a low voltage cable , that's gonna raise insertion laws . It's just gonna cause the , the data signal , not to work right . What is it gonna do to that DC current ? In fact , dc current gets wet .

So even if it gets inside the outer sheath it doesn't actually get in to unless it really soaks through . I Think you got your biggest risk would be corrosion at that point .

But what , what your user with the guy who's telling the story online is saying is your bigger risk is that water enters into the electronics at either end and frankly , that's the really expensive stuff water . Water does does damage electronic electrical equipment . So it lets out the , the magical green smoke that held all the magic holding the electronics together .

What it should do , I know with some switches , if you , if it shorts out the Between the managers are short out between the two . The most switches pewee switches have a Short circuit protection that'll just turn off the power to the port .

But if , and if you want to know what it would actually do is it was most like you'd see the port blink on and off about every ten seconds Because it would try and renegotiate the pewee , turn it on , see a short and drop it out .

So that's really what you would see , but it would be it happened pretty quickly if it was going to do something on the cable .

That may not be covered in any of the other classifications . Poe is also technically fault managed power , but it's already considered class 2 because it's under 60 volts and under 100 watts , but it's still . Fault managed . Volt server , digital electricity those are trademark trade models .

Those are trademark trademarked terms for volt server and it is a form of digital electricity . Hand to it has one now . That is is fault managed power and a couple other people . Who's it ? Comms cope , yep , comms cope has one now . So I know those three are the fault managed power and the the that those would be considered class 4 .

What's interesting about those is they're above class 2 . The difference between class 2 and class 4 is you have to be above 100 watts or above 60 volts . Then you can go for fault managed power in class 4 . Now what's interesting about that is so far I don't know anyone .

And then this is the challenge out there I don't know anyone who sends fault managed power with data combined . Most people I know just do fault managed power . Poe is fault managed power with data combined but it's got that hundred watt limitation . You , if I cleared up like mud yeah , that's clear as mud .

It can already do One gigabit , 2.5 , 5 , 10 gig , 40 gig . It's on cat cable . If it can send the cat cable , you can send PoE with it . So I don't think there's any room to go up for data . But I think what you're gonna see most likely is people figuring out what all you can do on PoE that we're not doing today .

So you're gonna see more applications , whether that's screens , sensors , concepts . I think you're also gonna see it just become more of a thing , a thing that people see more often . It's the adoption rate is starting to go up and become more adopted . We're gonna see some radical , magical standard change ? Not yet . I don't think so .