PowerDsine Ltd. (Farmingdale, NY), a leader in Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) solutions, announced the approval by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) of standard 802.3af-2003, which defines the specifications to deliver power over standard Ethernet cables. PowerDsine has been a major contributor to the 802.3af task force, and participated in the call for interest in the 802.3 working group in 1999. The standard was approved by the IEEE Standards Board on June 12, 2003, and will be published on or before July 11, 2003, as "802.3af-2003."
"The standard ratification will add extra impetus to the current trend amongst silicon vendors to design chipsets for laptops and portables that require low power consumption below the 12.95W prescribed in the PoE standard," said Amir Lehr, vice president, business development and strategic planning at PowerDsine. "As these devices become less power-hungry and PoE becomes the standard in most corporate IT environments, there will no longer be a need for business people to carry a variety of different plugs when traveling. I confidently predict that in the next five years more than 75% of enterprise network devices will be powered by Ethernet."
