Enabling PoE on the Appliance

If your TZ is designed for PoE support, the PoE ports must be enabled individually for powered device (PD) detection and classification. By default, the highest port number has the highest priority in powering on a PD. You can control the supplied power level and port priority from SonicOS.

To enable PoE and configure basic PoE settings

1. Point your browser to the LAN or WAN IP address and log into the appliance as an administrator (default: admin / password).

2. Navigate to the NETWORK | System | > PoE Settings page.

3. Select Enable PoE. The display changes:

   

4. Accept the default of 100 in the Max Power Threshold field or type in a number between 1 and 100. This is the percentage of the maximum available power that the PoE controller allocates to the PoE ports on the appliance.
5. Click Accept.
6. The NETWORK | System | > PoE Settings page displays an interactive graphical representation of the PoE port status under PoE Status, with the PoE Monitor table showing the per port Power Mode (802.3 AT or 802.3 AF), Power Allocation, and Power Consumption.

7. To enable PoE power on a specific port, click the port image or checkbox of the port then click either Configure above the PoE Monitor table, or the Edit icon in the PoE Monitor table row for that port. The Poe Port Settings dialog displays the Power Enable option along with other options.

   

8. Select Power Enable, then set the desired options and click Save.
9. Power Mode – Changes to this option do not take effect unless a PoE device is connected to that port. The TZ detects the mode from the device, but you can change the mode here. For example, if the Power Mode is detected as 802.3 AT, you can change it to 802.3 AF if you know that the device requires a lower power level.
10. Power Priority Level – By default, this option is set to Low for all PoE ports and the highest numbered PoE port has the highest priority for power as distributed by the PoE controller. Set this option to High on a lower numbered port to give it a higher priority.
11. If the Power Mode is detected as 802.3 AT and then changed to 802.3 AF, the PoE device shuts down if its power consumption spikes above the 802.3 AF power budget for that port. Similarly, reducing the Max Power Threshold so that not all PoE ports have some power prevents devices connected to the lower priority ports from powering on.
12. Repeat Step 7 and Step 8 to enable PoE power on other ports, as needed.
13. The PoE Status display shows blue for the PoE port when an 802.3 ATdevice is connected. A green port is displayed when an 802.3 AFdevice is connected.

See the SonicOS Network administration guide for more information.